EELIGION AMONG THE PEOPLE OF ASIA MINOR. 161 



was to be interred, or places of secondary rank like Damascus, 

 or the Hadji Bek Taslii monastery, or some local shrine. 



The Armenians of one region are wont to assemble on Cross 

 ^Mountain at the festival of Vartavar in midsummer, which is 

 interpreted as celebrating the transfiguration of our Lord, and 

 partly also as recalling the flood of Noah. They may throw 

 water over one another in memory of the flood, or release captive 

 pigeons as Xoah sent the dove forth of the ark, but why do they 

 in some cases build fires, about which they walk seven times 

 and then jump through the flames f And why do they in some 

 places read from the Gospel at each of the four sides of the fire, 

 and then take a burning stick and shake ashes from it on all the 

 principal parts of the house, or strike it seven times on every 

 person and animal at hand ? Why indeed, unless the mid- 

 summer festival of the Armenians, which is traced by their own 

 more intelligent men to the pre-Christian Armenian festival in 

 honour of Anahid, preserves certain features of fire worship held 

 by the early Armenians in common with their neighbours and 

 kinsfolk, the Persians ? 



At Beuyurtlen in Pontus, Greeks from a hundred villages are 

 said to gather on a mountain top in the summer of every year. 

 There they spend the night in the open air, have religious ser- 

 vices, led by the priests, in the morning dawn, they eat the food 

 they have brought, and after enjoying to the full a religious 

 picnic return to their homes. 



Take another day in midsummer and visit a bald limestone 

 ridge, a hundred miles from the last named place, and, if what 

 eye-witnesses say is true, you will see another crowd, this time 

 one of Piedhead or Shia Turks, assembling to the number of 

 thousands. There is a sheep for every house among the well-to- 

 do, the animals are sacrificed, the meat is distributed to the poor 

 and to friends, with plenty left over for the family that makes 

 the offering. The date is determined by the beginning of the 

 harvest in any given year, or as some affirm by the summer 

 solstice, " the turn of the year." I have not yet been able to 

 accept the invitation given me to attend and participate in 

 this scene. There is more truth, however, than is sometimes 

 realised in the claim of Shia Turks, that less than the thickness 

 of an onion skin separates them from Christians. They are 

 strongly aftirmed by outsiders to practise a degenerate form of 

 the Lord's Supper, but they are ignorant, low in the social scale, 

 and in religious habits are secretive and deceptive. All the 

 gatherings of religious clans, of which the above -are samples, 

 represent a mild type of pilgrimage. The more formal pilgrim- 



