Armenian Highlands

“ The Cilician Armenians were mainly shepherds and husbandmen, but they were also one of the most civilised and progressive sections of the Armenian race. Schools, both Armenian and American, had been established in the mountains, and the mountaineers were in close contact with Adana, Tarsus, Mersina and the other ports and cities of the Adana plain, where commerce and industry were almost entirely in the hands of the Armenian element—an element constantly reinforced from the reservoir of Armenian population in the highlands. ”

“ Nearly everything is raised or grows wild in Armenia which is to be had in the Northern or Southern States of America, though of course each country has some things peculiar to itself. The products of the North are paralleled by those of the rugged picturesque highlands of North Turkish and Russian Armenia, with their cold, snowy winters, short, hot summers, and mild intervening seasons ”

“ Again, the influence of the mountain home of the Armenians is expressed in their art. Poems and songs often extol the fairness of the valleys where rest will be found after descent along interminable slopes. Sometimes the beauty of lakes, embosomed in high plateaus, fires the poet’s fancy. Towering summits figure in legend as steeples from which melodious chimes send forth their tones. Armenian music, too, resounds with echoes that seem to reverberate from valleys cut deep in the sides of their mountains. ”

“ Hittite dominance extended to the southern group of mountains. It may be assumed that the Armenians of the present day are direct descendants of these ancient populations, due allowance being made for the invasion of Iranian peoples who brought eastern culture to the land. The free inflow of this eastern element was impeded, however, by the highly dissected table-land of Armenia. It trickled westward without ever assuming the proportion of a flood. Hence the Armenian physical type is preserved with considerable purity beneath the shroud of Aryan culture. ”

“ Rising above the general level of this Armenian tableland are barren and forbidding ranges, broken by many gloomy gorges, which culminate, on the extreme northeast, in the mighty peak of Ararat, the traditional resting-place of the Ark. Armenia is completely hemmed in by alien and potentially hostile races. ”

“ But when you cross the Euphrates, you enter a land of insecurity and fear. The peasant and townsman live on sufferance; the mastery is with the nomad; you are setting foot on the domain of the Kurd.
This insecurity was the chronic condition of Armenia proper, and it was not merely due to the unfortunate political experiences of the land. In its geographical configuration, as well as in its history, the Armenian plateau is a country of more accentuated characteristics and violent contrasts than the Anatolian Peninsula which adjoins it on the west. ”

“ Yet there is scarcely a remote valley or lonely island which does not attract a band of pilgrims to worship in the beautiful monasteries which date from the times of the kings of Armenia and keep alive the story of the past. The fertile ground is for the most part tilled by an Armenian peasantry, whose burrows, resembling large ant-hills, are scarcely perceptible in the scene. ”

“ The beautiful region about Lake Van, the vast plains of Bulanik, of Mush, and of Kharput are the principal seats of the Armenian peasantry—a peasantry as sturdy as the Mussulman settlers and far more industrious and progressive than they. Another advantage possessed by the Armenians is their favourable geographical situation in relation to the Turks and the Kurds. The Armenian population compose a mass of varying compactness which extends across the tableland from east to west, and may be said in a general manner to divide as with a wedge the two branches of the Mussulman inhabitants. ”

“ When the roses are blowing in the gardens of the seaboard, the Armenian rivers may be bound with ice; an unbroken sheet of snow may dazzle the eyes of the traveller, as he penetrates from this border country of parallel crests and depressions to the open landscapes of the tableland.
Fifty miles of intricate mountain country, inhabited at all periods by a sparse and little civilised population of doubtful or [8] mixed race! ”

“ From the Turk and Persian, the Armenian must ever remain separate, as he has through centuries, though living in the midst of them, remained separate. The gulf that divides the one nation from the other [40] two, the wall of iron that rises between them is the position of woman. ”

“ Access to the billowy surface of Armenian mountain lands is obtained by means of either the Murad Su or the Kara Su. The union of these two rivers into the single watercourse known as the Euphrates at a short distance above Keban Maden has at all times attracted much of the traffic and travel between Armenia and Mesopotamia. ”

“ Modern research, however, places the inhabitants of the plateau of Anatolia and of the Armenian mountain land in the same racial type.
Planted squarely on the scene of the secular conflict between the civilization of Europe and Asia, Armenia became the prey of the victor of the moment. But the united influence of site and configuration was more than once during this long struggle strong enough to confer independence on the Armenian. As a buffer between eastern and western empires the country enjoyed three distinct periods of native rule prior to the Ottoman conquest. ”

“ I have lately [372] finished reading the MS. of some two hundred letters from missionaries, a very large part of them dealing with the oppressions and sufferings of the Armenians, which were of a most frightful character. The poor creatures must have help before the winter opens in earnest, or they will perish. An Armenian winter is usually very severe, the snow lying on the ground from four to six feet in depth and the cold being intense. ”

“ The province is less mountainous and much richer than its eastern neighbours. Agriculture is flourishing, the nomad shepherd is comparatively rare, and there are a number of populous towns, with the beginnings of local manufactures.
The peasant population is predominantly Turkish, interspersed with important Greek enclaves, which have held their own from the first Seljuk invasions to the present day; but there are also a number of Armenian villages, and the Armenians constitute—or constituted before June, 1915—-about half the population of the towns. ”

“ The other opinion lately brought forward is that the Armenian nation, belonging to the Aryan race, came from the north, from Caucasia, and did not occupy the country before the seventh century B.C. They followed the track of the Medes, owing to the gradual decline of the Assyrian Empire. The arguments in favor of this theory are the facts that the Armenians in their physiognomy and natural construction and in their traditions and language have close connection and resemblance with other Aryan nations, which would be the contrary if they had an Assyrian or Chaldean origin. ”

“ The country to be sure, is so situated as to form a highway from Europe to the Mesopotamian valley, and from Asiatic Russia to the Mediterranean, and although it has been overrun by Assyrians, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, Persians, Turks, Egyptians, and still others, yet we must speak of it as isolated, for the science that has brought remote countries into contact has not affected Armenia to any considerable degree. ”

“ Lord Bryce writes of the Armenian race, “It is the only one of the native races of Western Asia that is capable of restoring productive industry and assured prosperity to the now desolate region that was the earliest home of civilization.” In the past, the energy of the people has been wasted in ceaseless conflict. ”

“ He is the joy of his mother, the protector of his sister, the lover of his wife, the server of his church and the martyr of his fatherland, so full of charming scenery and sacred memories.
The ideal and the highest ambition of the Armenian is, and always has been, and always will be, Liberty in his home-land. The accumulation of wealth is not their highest desire, though they have rare chances and natural ability for that. The luxuries of life are not the greatest attraction for them, though they have the worst example before their eyes. ”

“ Russia having in the last century wrested from Persia and Turkey a large portion of Armenia, there are over a million of Armenians in the Armenian provinces of Russia, besides those who reside in the commercial cities of the same empire. Their financial and intellectual condition is far better than that of those living in Persia, or in the interior of the Turkish provinces of Armenia. ”

“ Thousands are on the mountains, or out on the plains escaping from the sword and bayonet and spear of the Turk and Kurd. Their misery, as they wander in rags, or creep about the ruins of their villages, is appalling.
Armenian Women, Province of Van.—Page 290. Besides trade and agriculture, the inhabitants of this province are engaged in a few industries, such as the making of coarse cotton chintz, a highly prized water-proof fabric of goat hair and a thick woolen cloth called shayah. The women assist in all the labors of the men, particularly in the field, where entire families may be seen. ”

“ Its population, a medley of all the races of Asia, amounts in number to 45,703, the bulk of whom are Russians, Kalmucks, and Tatars. The Armenians are shopkeepers here, just as they are in all countries in the world; notwithstanding their religion, which should make them coalesce with the Westerns, they retain in their manners and customs every thing belonging to the East. The Armenian carries everywhere with him that spirit of traffic which is common to him with the Jew; always at work on some stroke of business, always ready to seize a flying opportunity ”

“ Indeed the Armenian is ubiquitous in the Nearer Asia, from [428] the northern province of Persia to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Yet this people as a whole can scarcely amount to more than 3,000,000 souls, a round figure of which the principal components are as follows:—
Two sets of causes are responsible for the recent outbreaks of Armenian sentiment in regions where this people are an insignificant minority, separated from the natural and historical seats of their race. ”

“ Another circumstance which adds materially to the chances of success of an autonomous Armenia is the existence of a number of nourishing Armenian communities of various sizes in other countries—in the Russian Caucasus and the Russian Empire, Persia, the United States, Egypt, the Balkans, France, Great Britain, India, Java, etc.—which are at the present time looking forward with enthusiasm and readiness for sacrifice, to "do their bit" in the sacred work of the reconstruction of their stricken and beloved Motherland. ”

“ Who are the Armenians? The average American knows very little about them, while few even of the educated classes have much knowledge of the race or its history. Many people regard them as barbarians, partially Christianized. Some think them of Chinese type; most often they are considered as Turks because the chief portion of Armenia is part of the Turkish Empire; every Armenian feels justly indignant at the latter classification. ”

“ Armenian landscapes—where blue lakes lie lapped in treeless plains, swelling with ochreous surface from hummock to hill, from hill to some long descending mountain outline that sweeps from the summit of a snow-crowned cone—the note which is uttered by man is lost. ”

“ There are about five millions of Armenians in the world at present: three millions in the Turkish Empire, a million and a half in Russian Armenia, and half a million more scattered through Persia, India, and Burmah, Egypt, Europe (there are two or three hundred thousand in the Austrian Empire) , and America. ”

“ The original home of an Armenian population, who probably entered their historical seats from the west, it is dotted over with the ruins of Armenian churches, monasteries and villages, and is mainly but sparsely inhabited by Kizilbash Kurds.9 The natural boundary between Armenia and Asia Minor is the course of the Western Euphrates between the town of Kemakh, the burial-place of the Armenian Arsakid kings, and its passage through Taurus below Keban-Maden. ”

“ According to the above statements the Armenian Kingdom began at twenty-fourth century B.C. and ended at fourteenth century A.D., thus embracing a period of nearly 3,800 years with about 600 years' intervals of subjection, during which time they were governed by provincial system, which can not be called total subjection with the present meaning of the word. During the last centuries Armenia became gradually divided between Turkey, Russia and Persia. ”

“ The Armenian is bound up with his native soil; every change of climate is extremely upsetting to him, and there is nothing he misses so much as clear, cold water. For this reason alone residence in the desert is intolerable for him. ”

“ Religious more than racial differences have kept them apart. This fact should be borne in mind when we consider the Armenian problem. Armenia is no longer a geographical term in any national sense; it represents a persecuted people, almost living as outlaws both in their own original land and in many other places, chiefly Turkish, Russian, and Persian. ”

“ They have made researches into Armenian history and have given to the world the results of those researches. They have taught the Armenians European languages, and have imparted to a race that had become ignorant and backward, because separated from Europe, the spirit of Occidental civilization. ”