LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
Impressions of Turkey 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 I. 
 Fourth Edition. With Maps and Illustrations, 8vo, 
 
 Cloth, I2S. 
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 
 BEFORE A.D. 170. 
 
 " Prof. W. M. Ramsay is the greatest living authority on the 
 geography of Asia Minor, and on the historical and archaeological 
 questions associated with its study. Of these questions none are 
 more important than those connected with the early history of the 
 Christian Church. . . . The first part of the volume deals with St. 
 Paul in Asia Minor, a subject in the treatment of which Prof. 
 Ramsay is peculiarly at home, and which he treats with singular 
 freshness of erudition. The latter part, covering the period A.D. 
 64-170, consists of the material originally employed for the lectures 
 delivered at Mansfield College, but now entirely recast and con- 
 siderably enlarged. . . . His results are of profound interest to all 
 students of early ecclesiastical history." Times. 
 
 II. 
 
 ST. PAUL THE TRAVELLER AND THE 
 ROMAN CITIZEN. 
 
 Third Edition. 8vo, cloth, with Map, zos. 6d. 
 
 " By his important work, The Church in the Roman Empire, 
 Professor Ramsay established his reputation as an authority on 
 
 Suestions of Christian antiquity, and in this new work, in which he 
 allows the footsteps of St. Paul in his great missionary journey, 
 his knowledge of Roman law and custom, and personal researches 
 in the countries through which the Apostle travelled, enable him to 
 throw light on many points in Luke's narrative. The book is 
 interesting and instructive, and must be cordially commended to 
 the attention of the New Testament student." Scotsman. 
 
 LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 27 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
Impressions of Turkey 
 
 During Twelve Tears' Wanderings 
 
 BY 
 
 W. M. Ramsay, D.C,L., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR IN ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF EXETER AND OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, AND 
 PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHEOLOGY, OXFORD 
 
 LONDON 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 27 PATERNOSTER ROW 
 1897 
 
ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
TO THE MANY FRIENDS 
 
 OF MANY NATIONALITIES 
 
 WHO HAVE HELPED MY WORK 
 
 IN ASIA MINOR 
 AND ESPECIALLY TO 
 
 MR. E. PURSER 
 
 AND THE OTHER OFFICIALS OF 
 THE OTTOMAN RAILWAY 
 
 192488 
 
PREFACE 
 
 LOVE for Asiatic Turkey and its people, com- 
 bined with hope for its future and interest in 
 its past history, may justify the publication of 
 these pages, in which I have tried to record 
 frankly the impressions left on my mind during 
 the wanderings of twelve years, and the studies 
 of seventeen years. I cannot hope that they 
 will be generally acceptable to those whose 
 minds are made up on one side or the other, 
 for they steer a middle course and regard no 
 person and no people as wholly in the right. 
 The method followed is for the most part to 
 take the reader into the heart of Turkey and 
 let him look for himself, explaining my own 
 impression about the facts which he sees. 
 
 I began to travel with a strong belief in the 
 imperial mission of Britain, and I end with a 
 stronger faith in the English-speaking race. 
 But I have learned also to appreciate the 
 high qualities of other great nations. 
 
Vlll PREFACE 
 
 During five years, 1880-1884, my wife 
 and I were resident (or rather nomadic) in 
 Turkey, and after that date, many of my 
 vacations, and some of hers, were devoted 
 to travelling there. Sir Charles Wilson 
 trained me as an explorer, during two 
 journeys ; and to his wide knowledge of 
 Turkey, Syria and Arabia I am deeply in- 
 debted. But he must not be held in any 
 way responsible for, or sympathetic with, my 
 views. Except where an authority is quoted, 
 I have studiously avoided borrowing from 
 the conversation and opinions of Western 
 observers, for it seems to me both unfair and 
 misleading to give as one's own impressions 
 of Turkey mere fragments of the talk one has 
 had with other Europeans. 
 
 The lessons learned from Sir C. Wilson 
 I passed on to better men than myself, who 
 went with me as beginners in Turkish travel, 
 Mr. A. C Blunt in Oct.-Nov., 1881, Prof. 
 J. R. S. Sterrett, Amherst College, Mass., 
 in 1883, Mr. A. H. Smith, of the British 
 Museum, in 1884, Mr. H. A. Brown, of 
 Exeter College (who has found in Mashona- 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 land a soldier's death, as one of the thirty- 
 three picked men who composed Major 
 Wilson's ill-fated party), in 1886 and 1887, 
 Mr. D. G. Hogarth, Fellow of Magdalen 
 College, in 1887 and 1890, and the Rev. 
 A. C. Headlam, Fellow of All Souls' College, 
 in 1890. Of these Prof. Sterrett, in 1884, 
 1885, and Mr. Hogarth, in 1891, 1892, 
 went on to make independent and bril- 
 liantly successful journeys in Asia Minor. 
 Mr. Hogarth's Wandering Scholar in the 
 Levant gives a vivid and amusing picture of 
 some of his experiences : he has less love for 
 the Turkish peasants than I have, and none 
 of my belief in their capacity for development, 
 while he admires the Turkish officials much 
 more than I do, applying to them, on p. 140, 
 the language which M. Waddington uses of 
 the Roman officers of the best period. His 
 book, with its admiration for the activity and 
 resolution of the Turkish officials, may serve 
 as a corrective to my contempt for their 
 sluggishness and weakness. His view re- 
 mains a marvel to me. 
 
 The Turkish language I have picked up 
 b 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 only in a conversational way from the 
 peasants ; but, though I do not profess to be 
 very familiar with it, yet, in comparison with 
 the ordinary archaeologists, I have some con- 
 siderable advantage. In 1881 I used a Greek 
 interpreter. After 1882 I employed none, 
 but acted as interpreter for my travelling 
 companions. 
 
 Some references are made to discussions 
 which I have published elsewhere, in order to 
 suggest that the brief statements sometimes 
 made in these pages on great questions are 
 not set down without thought. 
 
 We at first intended to add a chapter on 
 " Turkish Village Life in a Woman's View " ; 
 but judged it better to make this into a 
 separate little book, which will, I hope, appear 
 in October, under the auspices of the same 
 
 publishers. 
 
 W. M. RAMSAY. 
 
 ABERDEEN, loth May, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA - - i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA : I. THE WAY OUT - - 50 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA: II. THE WAY HOME - - 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES OF ASIA MINOR - - - 94 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 PAST AND PRESENT IN ASIATIC TURKEY - ... 124 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 163 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE ARMENIANS - - 19 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES AND THE ARMENIAN 
 
 PROTESTANTS - 220 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 240 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS IN ASIA MINOR - 262 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS - 280 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA. 1 
 
 IT is not difficult to write an interesting description 
 of an eastern country, if you have spent only a few 
 months in it. In that time you see the picturesque 
 facts ; the salient features of the country, the people, 
 and the life, impress themselves on you, and group 
 themselves in a strong, emphatic, unified, well- 
 conceived picture. You have learned how simple 
 oriental life and character are ; how easy it is to 
 govern an oriental race ; how small a matter it is to 
 understand the " Eastern Question " ; how quickly 
 you would clear up the tangle of the Turkish difficulty, 
 if you had the opportunity. You can describe the 
 whole nature of the people in broad, firm, striking 
 outlines. You have not been troubled with con- 
 tradictory impressions, for you have had no time 
 to receive them. You have seen only one side, 
 and the novelty and interest of your experiences 
 
 1 The opening paragraphs of this chapter spring from my own 
 experience, and have been in my mind as an introduction ever 
 since 1884, when I began to think of writing this book. They 
 have no relation to any work except my own. 
 
 I 
 
2 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE 
 
 have impressed that side so strongly on you, that 
 you are rilled with the consciousness of new know- 
 ledge and the power that it gives, with the con- 
 viction of truth in your knowledge. The East, 
 which was only a dream and a theory to you, has 
 become a reality, and you understand all that part 
 of the world's literature that is connected with the 
 East in a way that you never understood it before. 
 You feel what a great step you have made when 
 you came in contact with Eastern men, and appre- 
 ciated the subtle charm which the oriental nature 
 always exercises on the Western man, if at all im- 
 aginative and impressionable. You have learned, 
 too, how absolutely divided is the Eastern man 
 from the Western in all his thoughts and aspira- 
 tions. You have experienced the impassable gulf 
 that divides you from the oriental, as well as the 
 strange attraction that he exercises on you. 
 
 But when the months have grown into years of 
 acquaintance, you don't find the Eastern nature 
 and the "Eastern Question" so easy to understand. 
 You have had time to see more, and you find that 
 every one of your earliest impressions is contra- 
 dicted by some later experience, that every state- 
 ment which you formerly made without hesitation 
 has become more doubtful. You can no longer 
 make broad and sweeping assertions and general- 
 isations, for you feel that they are always unfair to 
 
OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA 3 
 
 some extent, and untrue to some of your knowledge. 
 When you have had a wide enough experience, 
 you can strike an average among your facts ; but 
 even then you can no longer feel that delightful 
 confidence which sweeps you on from fact to fact 
 and carries the reader with you. 
 
 As I try to describe the impressions that many 
 journeys have made on me, I feel that the question 
 is likely to be put, what business has an archae- 
 ologist to write about modern life and modern 
 manners in Turkey ? I have never studied the 
 " Eastern Question ". I went out to Turkey with- 
 out any intention to do so, filled only with the 
 intense and overmastering desire to understand the 
 old history of the country which has always been 
 the battle-field between the Oriental and the 
 Western spirit. For years I had as a student at 
 college been fascinated with the idea of that long 
 conflict which is the epitome of all history, the 
 battle of East and West ; and now I was going to 
 the land that stretches like a bridge from the East 
 to the West, connecting them at once and separat- 
 ing them. To understand and sympathise with 
 the spirit of the land was my only thought. 
 
 It is, however, perhaps no disadvantage that I 
 did not go out to study the " Eastern Question ". 
 Half an hour's talk with a man who is going out 
 for that purpose is usually enough to show you 
 
4 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE 
 
 pretty clearly what answer he will bring back. 
 According to his sympathies and prejudices will 
 be the company in which he is plunged and the 
 information that he receives. He will return feel- 
 ing more strongly than ever that he was right from 
 the beginning. I was saved from that fate by the 
 fact that my sole guide and my sole criterion in 
 all circumstances was the wish to learn about past 
 history. I went where I could learn and forced 
 everybody to teach me. I did not go to look for 
 walls, and columns, temples, and statues, and 
 coins. Many cities and monuments have been 
 before my eyes, but I do not pose as their dis- 
 coverer. What I hope is, with the help of many 
 men and many minds, to have thought over them, 
 till I have gained a true idea of the people who 
 built them and the society which needed them. 
 
 But for my purposes it was necessary that new 
 evidence, in other words unknown monuments, 
 should be discovered ; and the practical problem 
 of discovery in Asia Minor always presents itself as 
 a study in human nature. You come in contact 
 with all classes of the native population, Moslem 
 and Christian, Jews and Kizil-Bash, and you must 
 observe and adapt yourself to the character and 
 prejudices of every one, if you want to make many 
 discoveries. If you go into a village, and ask point 
 blank whether there are any " written stones " 
 
OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA 5 
 
 (yasili tashlar) or " marbles " (mermer, distin- 
 guished from common stones, kara-tash} or " old 
 money" (eskipara), every man is ready to swear 
 that there is nothing of the kind : in other villages 
 at a distance, three or five or ten hours away, they 
 know that there is abundance of such things, but 
 here there is nothing whatsoever. You may point 
 to a " written marble " in the fountain beside which 
 you have halted ; but you are told that it has been 
 brought from far away, and there are no others like 
 
 'it in the village. In the estimation of the villagers, 
 wise from long and sad experience, every stranger 
 who asks questions and whose business is not 
 obvious, must be an agent of the Government, and 
 therefore an enemy ; and their wish and hope and 
 prayer is to get rid of him as quickly and cheaply 
 
 ^ as possible. It is a lesson in the " Eastern Ques- 
 tion " to see the dislike and fear with which every 
 village regards the Government. You are more 
 struck with this in the Mohammedan villages, for, 
 in the Greek villages at least, the Christian people 
 are quicker witted, and can distinguish more readily 
 between the Government agent and the travelling 
 scholar. 
 
 Your archaeologist takes a less direct, but a more 
 fruitful method. Among Mohammedans he does 
 not declare at once his business, for no one would 
 believe in his sincerity (except in some sophisticated 
 
6 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE 
 
 villages, where those strange beings that are mad 
 after " written stones " have become familiar in 
 recent years). He stops his horse in the first open 
 space, usually near a fountain or a mosque, a glance 
 at which gives him some idea of the "stone-pro- 
 ducing" capacity of the place. In three minutes 
 he is surrounded by the entire male population. 
 Unless it is the harvest season, when the men con- 
 descend to do a little work, they have been sitting 
 in some shady place, usually beside or in the "'guest- 
 room " (Musafir-Oda), talking little, and only at 
 rare intervals, those who can muster up a little 
 tobacco smoking cigarettes, which they are very 
 generous in sharing with one another. If there is 
 any man of wealth in the village, he has an Oda of 
 his own, where he entertains all comers ; and the 
 more respectable and respected part of the male 
 population is usually congregated there ; the great 
 man smokes his narghile, the rest cigarettes, and 
 the droning sound of the rich man's hubble-bubble 
 adds to the soporific effect of the warm summer 
 weather and the quiet and lazy surroundings. 
 
 As the news spreads that a stranger has arrived 
 and is 'asking for the Musafir-Oda, unwonted bustle 
 reigns in the village. A pleasing, mild excitement 
 affects the population. The loungers in the Oda 
 rise, go to the door, look in the heap of old slippers, 
 down at heel and usually full of holes, for their own 
 
OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA 7 
 
 property, which they recognise with marvellous 
 intelligence among many that seem to your eyes 
 undistinguishable, slowly slip their feet into them, 
 and then as slowly shuffle their way to where the 
 archaeologist is sitting on his horse. All are eager 
 to ask the traditional series of questions, like the 
 Cyclops in the Odyssey, "Where do you come 
 from? What is your business? Where are you 
 going to?" You do not too hastily gratify their 
 curiosity, but leave them in pleasant anticipation 
 while you inquire for the Oda. If there is a rich 
 man who keeps his own Oda, you have already 
 contrived to pick up this information from some 
 casual wayfarer, who has arrested his wandering 
 step at sight of the strangers ; and you flatter the 
 local swell by asking for his Oda, showing your 
 familiarity with his name and his reputation for 
 hospitality. 
 
 The whole company then goes away to the Oda ; 
 the archaeologists leave their horses to their ser- 
 vants, go in and sit down in the place of honour, 
 the host or headman of the village does the same, 
 and each salutes the other. If you are prudent, 
 you throw your waterproof on the mats or cushions 
 before you take up your position ; for the cushions 
 and carpets are always full of dust and fleas, and 
 vermin loathe waterproof, while it also prevents 
 the dust from rising. After every one has sat 
 
8 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE 
 
 down and saluted, and there is a general atmo- 
 sphere of expectation, the questions as to your 
 origin and destination are repeated ; and you pro- 
 ceed by degrees to gratify the general curiosity. 
 Your business is to amuse and interest the people. 
 Their life is spent in an atmosphere of monotony, 
 amid a regular alternation of the annual incidents 
 of winter, sowing time and harvest, where the oc- 
 casional visit of an official is the only great trouble, 
 and the rare visit of a stranger furnishes the only 
 entertainment. If you want to get from them the 
 information which you desire, you must pay for it 
 by giving them as much pleasure and excitement 
 as you can ; and it is important to study the best 
 ways of catching the interest and sympathy of 
 your villagers. You tell them you come from 
 England, from London (Inghilterra-dann, Londra- 
 danri) ; and you answer as seems best the almost 
 invariable question, " Whether is England in Lon- 
 don, or London in England?" You tell that 
 London is the principal city of Inghilterra, but 
 there are other cities there besides ; and there is a 
 little buzz of stage-whispering, as each imparts to 
 his neighbour the news that you come from Lon- 
 dra, the head city, and must therefore be a man of 
 real consequence. No one but a " tenderfoot " 
 will say that he comes from any second-rate place, 
 like Oxford : if he does, he sets himself down as a 
 
OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA 9 
 
 mere villager like themselves, and sinks correspond- 
 ingly in their estimation. 
 
 During the conversation you pass round a supply 
 of tobacco, and every villager rolls himself a cig- 
 arette. On their side the entertainers prepare 
 coffee : l one of their number makes a little fire on 
 the hearth, produces some coffee beans from some 
 receptacle in the room or from the person of the 
 local magnate, roasts them, grinds them, boils the 
 water in a little high narrow tin pot with a long 
 handle, pours in the fine-ground powder, allows the 
 coffee to come twice to the boiling point, and then 
 pours it into two or three small cups, which are 
 offered first to the guests. If there is a lady among 
 the guests, sometimes one of the Turks who has 
 seen more of the world directs the bearer to offer to 
 the lady first ; if not it is wise to sign to him your- 
 self to do so. The unusual order imparts more 
 interest in the general esteem : it is much for them 
 to see a stranger of quaint dress and manners ; it is 
 an even greater novelty that a lady should travel 
 and talk and sit in the company of men ; but, when 
 the male guest, a person attended by servants, and 
 obviously possessing wealth beyond the dreams of 
 
 1 It is said that true oriental etiquette requires that no ques- 
 tions should be put to the stranger till coffee has been offered to 
 him. That has not been my experience among villagers; in more 
 cultivated society coffee is offered at once, but it takes a long time 
 to get it ready in a village. 
 
IO IN A TURKISH VILLAGE 
 
 avarice, orders the lady to be served first, it be- 
 comes clear to the least instructed villager that she 
 must be a very great person indeed, far above the 
 ordinary restraints of her sex, probably a near rela- 
 tive of the Sultan of Inghilterra. Then some one 
 brings forth a tale which he has heard somewhere, 
 that it is the custom in Inghilterra to have a woman 
 as supreme ruler ; and the question is propounded, 
 whether this is really true. A short sketch of the 
 British constitution, adapted to the comprehension 
 of the audience, is useful and effective at this stage. 
 
 Then you begin to talk about themselves, for to 
 every man the most interesting subject is himself, 
 and it is the greatest of consolations to him to talk 
 freely about his grievances. You inquire about the 
 prospects of the coming harvest or the last visit of 
 the tax-gatherer, and sympathise with the invariable 
 tale of rapacity, injustice and cruelty on the part of 
 the officials. You hear how old men have been ill- 
 treated or imprisoned, how many peasants have 
 had their oxen for ploughing seized and sold, how 
 much the taxes have increased in recent years. 
 
 Now comes the archaeologist's opportunity, when 
 mutual confidence is established. He introduces 
 the subject of "old stones" and " antikas ". The 
 guileless villagers rush headlong into the harmless 
 trap ; every one is eager to tell what he knows ; 
 and we sally forth in a body. Even the local 
 
OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA II 
 
 great man is sometimes roused to such unwonted 
 activity as to rise and walk round with the rest ; 
 if you have any distance to go, you are wise to 
 offer him the use of one of your servants' horses, 
 and the stirrups will require no adjustment to suit 
 him ; for all Turks tall or little ride with the same 
 stirrup. One man has got a " written stone " at 
 the side of his fire-place, another in the wall of his 
 house, a third has seen one in a field outside the 
 town. You pay with prudently ostentatious liber- 
 ality for the first, before you copy it; and the 
 general eagerness to find inscriptions is increased 
 tenfold. After that the men of the village are 
 ready to dig up every tombstone in the cemeteries 
 (which usually occupy more space than the dwell- 
 ing-houses), if there be any prospect of finding 
 letters on one. But the women are not so easy to 
 deal with, and, if news is carried out to the fields 
 that some infidel dogs are desecrating the cemetery, 
 they sometimes rush in, hot and wild with excite- 
 ment, and the scene becomes lively. Do not be 
 too much impressed with their pious respect for 
 the graves of their ancestors, for other motives co- 
 operate with that praiseworthy feeling in their 
 minds. Either they have not heard or they have 
 not believed that the Giaours are paying in good 
 silver for looking at the stones. Moreover they 
 know that your real object is to get the gold that 
 
12 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE 
 
 is concealed within those stones ; and, if the men 
 are silly enough to sell gold for silver, they are 
 resolved to know the reason why, even though the 
 usual restraints of the sex have to be for a time 
 thrown off. The men are convinced by them, for 
 the Mohammedan mind can never fully believe 
 that a man travels for any other object than 
 gold : if Christianity had done nothing else in the 
 East, it would be a great achievement that it has 
 enabled simple villagers to believe that men can 
 travel from mere desire of knowledge, and work for 
 mere ideals. When matters in the village get to 
 this stage, and every one makes up his mind that 
 you are searching for gold, relations are sometimes 
 imperilled ; and, as it is useless further to deny 
 that gold is your aim, the best way is to promise 
 to give to all a fair share of whatever is found, and 
 to urge them to co-operate and to keep strict 
 watch on their neighbours and on yourself. 
 
 Many are the exclamations of wonder, Mash- 
 allah! "What God wills!" as the archaeological note- 
 book is produced, and the letters copied into it. 
 If the inscription is upside down, as it is in the 
 majority of cases, your contortions as you struggle 
 to get into a position to see it, cause much interest ; 
 and, really, it is no wonder that the natives believe 
 all Ingleez to be mad, as they see you trying to 
 stand on your head and write in a book at the 
 
OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA 13 
 
 same time, especially as you have tried to make 
 them believe that you do this for no advantage to 
 yourself, but purely for pleasure. 
 
 If the inscription is important enough to deserve 
 an impression, that is a great time for the village, 
 as you demand water, dip in the impression paper ; 
 this is obviously a spell to facilitate the discovery 
 of the treasure hid within the stone, and every one 
 gazes in breathless attention. The natives, how- 
 ever, are sadly disappointed when, after some hours 
 or days of work, the archaeologist departs no richer 
 that he came ; but the marvel grows with time, 
 and the next traveller who comes a few years later, 
 will probably hear that you departed with several 
 camels' load of treasure. Several times a servant 
 of mine, arriving before me at a village, has heard 
 wonderful tales of this kind about a traveller ; and 
 on my arrival I have been recognised as the hero 
 of these fables. 
 
 The process, as thus described, seems tedious ; - 
 and it is not every one who will go through it. But 
 the first lesson one has to learn in the East is that 
 time has no value ; and, if you are in a hurry, you 
 will never get on so well with the Orientals. Prof. 
 Sterrett had great power of suiting himself to the 
 natives, and true sympathy with them ; and I did 
 not appreciate how much he had done for me by 
 these qualities, till I observed some other explorers, 
 
14 IN A TURKISH VILLAGE 
 
 who with many admirable and splendid qualities as 
 travellers, had not the sympathy and the patience 
 that are required for scenes like this. But I would 
 urge upon all archaeological travellers how im- 
 portant it is to study the natives, to learn about 
 them direct and not from report of others, to ob- 
 serve and study small things, to give some time 
 and care to the people through whom alone the 
 best discoveries are likely to be made. As reward 
 for a little patience and sympathy and kindliness, 
 you learn something of the thoughts and life of a 
 very simple-minded and interesting people, and you 
 may go away rich in historic treasure, better able to 
 interpret the monuments that you have discovered, 
 ready to write a new page of history, or to give 
 fresh colour and clearness to the tale of St. Paul's 
 wanderings. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR. 
 
 IT is then a useful part of the archaeologist's edu- 
 cation that he should learn to interest and amuse 
 the simple-minded audiences which surround and 
 gaze upon him in a Turkish village. You find by 
 experience some little jokes, which suit the native 
 wit ; and you may be sure that the remark which 
 proves effective in one Turkish village will be 
 equally suitable in all. Every one must learn 
 what suits his own style. One little remark which 
 I first made in sheer despair, proved immensely 
 effective ; and, when well introduced afterwards 
 on many an occasion, never failed to " bring down 
 the house ". After a considerable conversation, in 
 which I had been inquiring about the roads, the 
 distances, the course of the streams, and other 
 geographical points, in respect of which I pos- 
 sessed a certain ease and fluency in Turkish, a 
 native took the lead, and began to question me in 
 a more thorough-going way than is usual. He 
 soon exhausted my small stock of Turkish ; and at 
 last, being quite nonplussed by a long explana- 
 
 (15) 
 
l6 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 tory question, I exclaimed, " Turktche bilmaiorim" 
 (I don't know Turkish). Every one saw through 
 this barefaced excuse : that a man who had been 
 talking with perfect fluency for a quarter of an 
 hour, so long as he was the questioner, and had 
 been draining them of information about the 
 natural features and lie of the country, should try 
 to evade their questions by pretending not to know 
 Turkish ! they were too acute to be taken in by 
 chaff like this : every one, proud of his own per- 
 spicacity, turned to his neighbour, nudged him in 
 the ribs to attract his attention, imparted to him 
 the information that the stranger was a deep and 
 artful dodger, but they were too smart for him, and 
 saw through his stratagems. Pleased with their 
 own acuteness, they become pleased with you. 
 
 Another unfailing way of delighting the natives 
 is to draw a pointed and judicious contrast between 
 the English and the Turkish character. You take 
 your text from the wonder which they always feel 
 that a millionaire like yourself should go through 
 so much fatigue as you submit to every day; and 
 you explain that in Inghilterra, when a man 
 possesses money he goes away to travel and visits 
 many lands and peoples, while the poor man stays 
 at home ; but in Turkey, when a man is rich, he sits 
 in his house, and only the poor man goes forth to 
 work. Your remarks, if well put to them, rouse 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 1 7 
 
 intense interest, sometimes almost laughter (your 
 Turk does not often laugh) at your picture of 
 Turkish nature ; and occasionally it is clear that 
 you have succeeded in making them think a 
 little. 
 
 In 1883 Prof. Sterrett and I went to Orkistos, on 
 the frontier of Galatia, to look for a great inscription, 
 which had been apparently lost. It had been seen 
 and copied unsatisfactorily by several old travellers, 
 last of all by Hamilton. In 1861 the Berlin 
 Academy instructed Dr. Mordtmann to recopy it ; 
 but he failed to discover it. As Mordtmann was 
 familiar with the Turkish language and an ex- 
 perienced traveller, the discovery was obviously no 
 easy matter ; and some care was needed. We ar- 
 ranged our journey so as to sleep at a village some 
 hours distant, and next morning came on to Alikel 
 (earlier travellers call the place Alekian). Here we 
 found ourselves at a Turkmen Yaila, in a splendid 
 situation, with fertile lands, abundance of water and 
 grass, and a profusion of inscribed stones. We 
 avoided showing any interest in these, but intimated 
 our intention of inviting all the leading men to 
 dinner, and proceeded to purchase a sheep which 
 was to be cooked entire by the villagers for their 
 own benefit. I took means to find out whether 
 they preferred a lamb of that year, or a full-grown 
 sheep (whose flesh to us would have been uneatable) : 
 
1 8 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 their opinion was conveyed almost in the words of 
 the poet : 
 
 A one-year sheep was sweeter, 
 But a two-year sheep was fatter ; 
 
 Therefore they thought it meeter 
 To feed upon the latter. 
 
 After this was arranged, and the sheep and cooks 
 selected, we went away to see the winter village 
 (Kiskla) and the river Sangarios, as it seemed 
 better not to show interest in antiquities at this 
 stage. In the evening our Turkish servant pre- 
 sided at the dinner, and turn?d the conversation on 
 Mordtmann's visit : several of those present re- 
 membered him and his vain inquiries after the 
 stone, whose situation they willingly described. 
 Next morning a great crowd came to the mill with 
 us, and showed where the stone was hidden : it 
 formed the main support at the end of an embank- 
 ment along which the stream was conducted to 
 turn the mill. It was easy to strike a bargain with 
 the miller to uncover the stone, for the mill was 
 not working. A score of willing hands soon pulled 
 away the loose material ; but, alas ! the water had 
 deposited a hard thick incrustation which covered 
 the letters and filled up the hollows, leaving in most 
 places a smooth surface. Here and there a few 
 words could be read, so that the inscription was 
 identified. In a few minutes we recognised that 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 19 
 
 the stone could not be cleaned with our present 
 equipment ; and it seemed better to cover it up 
 forthwith carefully and to show some disappoint- 
 ment, as if the stone had turned out valueless : one 
 might return later after learning at some museum 
 how to clean marble. We spent the rest of the day 
 in copying the other inscriptions, especially one 
 large and difficult stone, and enjoying the delightful 
 air and the hospitable kindness of the Turkmens. 
 
 To finish the history of that inscription, the 
 " Charter of Orkistos," in February, 1884, 1 went to 
 Berlin, where Professo? Conze, keeper of the Royal 
 Museum, allowed me to see the process of cleaning 
 the Pergamenian marbles : but it was not till 1886 
 that A. H. Brown and I, returning from Cappa- 
 docia along the Halys and through Angora, took 
 Orkistos on our way. We came from Sivri-Hissar, 
 seven hours distant, intending to reach Alikel for 
 lunch ; but were detained till afternoon. In order 
 to have the opportunity of using some show of 
 authority, if need be, we brought a zaptieh with us, 
 to whom I promised a pound, as soon as the stone 
 was fairly in our hands in a suitable position with 
 full freedom for copying ; but he was instructed to 
 do nothing at first except praise our high rank and 
 influence. We found that the large stone over 
 which Sterrett and I spent so much time in 1883 
 had been broken immediately after our departure 
 
2O TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 in order to find the gold that we had obviously been 
 seeking for ; but the stone at the mill, which we 
 had regarded with contempt, was uninjured. The 
 miller had his mill going ; I think he suspected our 
 object, and set the water on as soon as we rode 
 into the Yaila, with the object of raising the price. 
 It did not, however, take much time to conclude a 
 bargain, for it was cheaper to pay a pound or two 
 extra, than to waste time or risk failure. Before 
 sunset, we had the end of the embankment de- 
 molished, and the great stone laid flat on the grass 
 beside it, to do as we pleased with. The miller 
 rebuilt the embankment with other stones : but did 
 not use the mill, having apparently no need for 
 working after the bargain was concluded. It took 
 four days' work, with the tools that I had brought 
 from Berlin, to clean the stone, and copy the in- 
 scription. The Berlin authorities recognised the 
 service by a letter of thanks from the Minister of 
 Education, and a liberal contribution to the ex- 
 penses of the expedition. 
 
 Probably an archaeologist who could do some 
 easy sleight of hand tricks would have a great 
 advantage as a discoverer. Certainly, a few chil- 
 dren's picture books would be a great resource, and 
 furnish unfailing amusement to the natives ; and 
 even more effective would be the art which with 
 scissors clips a menagerie of animals out of a sheet 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 21 
 
 or two of paper. Childish pleasures like that would 
 exactly suit the Turkish villagers, for, intellectually, 
 they are only children. In the quiet unbroken 
 monotony of village life, they make no mental 
 growth. The even placidity of Turkish village life 
 is hardly credible. Round a Christian or a Cir- 
 cassian village, there is at least a variety of crops ; 
 vegetables of several kinds are grown ; butter is 
 made; and a certain amount of art and work is 
 expended in giving variety and interest to food and 
 to life. But the one duty of the Turkish man 
 originally was to be a soldier ; and when he is not 
 seized by the conscription or compelled by poverty 
 and debt to go to Smyrna or Stambol or a railway 
 line, where money can be earned, he lounges 
 through life doing absolutely nothing, fed by the 
 women, occasionally crocheting a stocking, 1 or 
 minding a little child of two or three years old. 
 As all field work falls to the share of the women, in 
 addition to most of the house-work (of which how- 
 ever the total amount is but small), cultivation is 
 restricted to the simplest operations. Enough of 
 corn is sown to feed the village, and nothing more 
 is produced. The villagers feed on little except 
 bread, with thick sour milk (a delightful adjunct to 
 food in hot weather) ; meat is not common except 
 
 1 That is the process, not knitting, as Mrs. Ramsay pointed out 
 to me. 
 
22 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 on high days and holidays ; though the richer 
 Turks are often great eaters. 
 
 Every one of the few processes in Turkey that 
 require skilled labour is performed by a Christian. 
 If a Turk lives in anything better built than a hut, 
 I have always found that it is constructed by a 
 Greek. If a Turkish village requires a fountain 
 with its aqueduct, a Greek workman is employed 
 to make it. On a splendid Seljuk medresse 
 (religious college) at Sivas is inscribed the name of 
 the Greek architect Kalo-Yannis. Needless to say 
 that almost all trade, especially the carrying and 
 retail trade, is in the hands of Christians : the 
 muleteer is often, and the camel-driver always, 
 Turk or Turkmen, but the owner both of the goods 
 and of the animals is a Christian. The Turk, if he 
 works, is a servant, a hewer of wood and a drawer 
 of water : he rarely can learn to do more. Only in 
 certain districts, where some manufacture has been 
 practised from time immemorial, do you find Turks 
 engaged in it ; but the careful observer will enter- 
 tain no doubt that they are only the older population 
 Mohammedanized. At Tyana I found an able and 
 active and wealthy Turk ; but he was distinctly not 
 Turk in type or race. 
 
 Life is thus reduced to its simplest elements and 
 the most unvaried uniformity. A company of 
 Turks in a village will sit for hours in almost 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 23 
 
 unbroken silence. I happened once in early 
 October, 1883, to come to a village, Tatarli, in the 
 Tchul-Ova, late in the afternoon, after a fatiguing 
 and disappointing day. I was making an experi- 
 mental journey, in an economical way, accompanied 
 by a single Turkish servant and a led horse to 
 carry our belongings. The experiment was an 
 utter failure, as will be duly set forth in chapter 
 xii., and I had on that day realised finally that it 
 was a failure, but that it must go on for a fortnight 
 longer. Being in a dull and languid humour, I was 
 disinclined for the strain of talking to and amusing 
 the usual assemblage of gazers at the Oda ; and 
 thought the procedure might be profitably varied 
 by trying how long they would remain silent. 
 Except for a few words and questions on the part 
 of my man, Murad, when he wanted water, chopped 
 straw for the horses, and our other simple require- 
 ments, no one spoke. I worked languidly at my 
 route survey. Murad was even more sick of this 
 one-horse style of travelling than I was, and was 
 probably affected by my dulness, for in general 
 he was good company. He looked after the 
 horses, cooked our dinner of ftufgur-pilaiff, of 
 which I ate a little, while the circle gazed and 
 meditated. 
 
 Muckle we looked, and muckle we thocht, 
 But word we ne'er spak' nane. 
 
24 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 Then Murad got out my blankets, and found in the 
 Oda a very old and thin mattress, which served to 
 keep the hard floor from my bones, while a water- 
 proof spread over it prevented its inhabitants from 
 reaching my skin. It was now about three hours 
 since we entered the village, and about two and a 
 half since any one had spoken. I made my pre- 
 parations for the night, disrobed myself, performed 
 my simple ablutions, and got in between the blank- 
 ets. Everybody gazed, and admired, and won- 
 dered what should come next. A lighted lamp 
 hung from the roof. I sat up and blew it out. 
 Then, at last, the leading magnate of the village 
 remarked, "Now let us go" (Kshimdi gidelim), 
 and they left me alone. I think they were a little 
 chilled and depressed, for, next morning, hardly 
 any one came to see us breakfast. 
 
 Again in 1884, returning to camp after being 
 detained from it by distance the preceding night, 
 I was seized with fever, when there was still two 
 hours' journey before us. As we were near a 
 village we went into it, and as the Oda was not fit 
 to use, from some cause or other, I lay down on 
 the shady side of a wall, while my servant put up 
 my horse, and then rode off to camp with orders 
 to bring me a kettle, some tea, and some quinine. 
 I waited alone ; a score of villagers came and sat 
 round in a semicircle ; I doubt if any of us moved 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 2$ 
 
 a muscle till the medicines arrived, two or three 
 hours later. 
 
 The British Consul at Angora in 1882, Mr. 
 Gatheral, a Glasgow man, who died shortly after 
 our visit, told us a very characteristic story of 
 Turkish habits. Stevens, the first cyclist to make 
 an excursion round the world, had passed through 
 Angora a year or two previously. His arrival on 
 one of the old lofty " bone-shakers " caused im- 
 mense excitement, and his departure on the fol- 
 lowing day was made a public ceremony. A great 
 crowd, including, I think, the Vali-Pasha himself, 
 assembled at the city gate from which he started, 
 and it was arranged that a cannon should be fired 
 as he mounted, partly as a signal to the crowds of 
 gazers along the road, partly, perhaps, as a com- 
 pliment to him. A number of Turks collected at 
 a wayside coffee-house a mile or more up the 
 winding road that leads towards the East. They 
 waited till the gun fired, then they all rose up, each 
 selected his own shoes among the pile that lay at 
 the door, shuffled his way into his shoes, and then 
 shuffled to the roadside a few yards from the 
 house, and sat down to wait till the strange 
 machine with one wheel arrived. They sat for 
 an hour, and began to think there was some delay. 
 They sat for another hour, and then some of them 
 began to drop off to other pressing concerns. The 
 
26 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 majority, however, sat on in patient expectation. But 
 they never saw Stevens. He had shot past them 
 while they were engaged in shuffling on their shoes. 
 In dealing with Orientals, a prime necessity 
 is perfect straight-forwardness and transparent 
 honesty : there should never be the slightest 
 variation in your word at different times or be- 
 tween your word and your act. What you have 
 once said should be final and irrevocable : be it 
 wise or foolish in itself, you should never draw 
 back from it or reconsider it : and when you 
 realise this, you become careful and think several 
 times before deciding. Even in offering money 
 for a coin or antique of any kind, I made a rule 
 never to vary from my first offer to a Turk ; if he 
 tried to bargain, it was explained to him that I 
 " had only one word " ; I had stated the value, 
 and it was for him to choose whether he wanted 
 the money or not. Of course, this way often 
 caused the loss of a coin, which a more skilful 
 bargainer would have bought ; but it produced a 
 great impression on the Turks, and everything 
 that inspires them with respect helps the traveller's 
 purpose ; and (to one who has none of the collec- 
 tor's instinct, and gathers from the type and legend 
 all the evidence that he seeks for) coins are of no 
 consequence except as means to attract people 
 and make them interested. 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 27 
 
 In conversation at home, wonder is often ex- 
 pressed that I could have avoided smoking, while 
 travelling so long in Turkey. But in Turkey I 
 often overheard the account given by my men of 
 my character and rank : among the first qualities 
 stated was " he drinks no coffee : he drinks no 
 tobacco : l he drinks no raki ". To drink coffee, and 
 not to drink tobacco, as I did in the earlier years 
 of travelling, is a proof of folly or weakness ; but 
 to drink nothing is a mark of great virtue. As 
 wine or raki can be procured only at a few great 
 cities, strict temperance is compulsory for the 
 archaeologist travelling ; but my experience as to 
 the effect on his working powers is unfavourable. 
 Coming in exhausted from a long day's work in 
 the sun, and eating in this condition, I could not 
 sleep for many hours ; but a small glass of raki 
 before eating, if procurable, was a medicine that 
 always ensured a good sleep. Of course one 
 ought not to work to exhaustion ; but that 
 prudent rule is easy to give and hard to follow. 
 In the later journeys I did not work so hard ; but 
 it was different when I was beginning, and success 
 was far ahead. 
 
 An important rule of conduct among the Turks 
 is that you must never permit the slightest sign of 
 
 1 To drink tobacco is the term for smoking both in Turkish 
 and Greek. 
 
28 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 disrespect to pass. Point it out at once ; insist on 
 redress ; and you will always be obeyed, if it is 
 clear that you mean business. It needs, of course, 
 both natural sense, sympathy, and some knowledge 
 of the people and manners, to discriminate between 
 well-meant manners, different from ours, and actual 
 disrespect. Some things are intended for compli- 
 ments, which we do not fully appreciate at their 
 intended value, as when a man insists on helping 
 you by peeling your hard-boiled egg with his dirty 
 fingers : you may acknowledge the courtesy and 
 lay aside the egg. But it is better to be too strict, 
 than to pass over anything that may be disrespect- 
 ful. When in doubt, strike ! That is the golden 
 rule in Turkey. You must speak and act as one 
 having authority. 
 
 Several of the older travellers in Turkey suffered 
 from not observing this rule. Hamilton, in his 
 earlier journeys, speaks several times of the annoy- 
 ance to which he was exposed. In vol. i., p. 193, 
 for example, he says : " To our disappointment, the 
 house belonged to a Turk : we always preferred a 
 Greek or Armenian house, in which we were less 
 exposed to the inconvenient and sometimes im- 
 pertinent curiosity of the host : in this case, how- 
 ever, the ill-timed curiosity of our landlord, who 
 at once began pulling about and scrutinising the 
 military buttons of my companion's coat, met with 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 29 
 
 a suitable rebuff from the colonel, who had no 
 idea at the time that the man was not one of the 
 servants of the house ". 
 
 Hamilton travelled in 1831, when the Turks had 
 not been tamed by adversity ; and he seems to have 
 found them very ready to air their fancied superiority 
 to one or two slenderlyequipped European travellers. 
 Older travellers often give the same report. Mac- 
 donald Kinneir, in 1813, speaks of "that blustering 
 air so peculiar to Turks " ; but his adventure at 
 Eski-Sheher gives such a bad picture of his way of 
 dealing with Orientals that one cannot wonder at 
 his experiences being unfortunate. 1 In several other 
 cases the travellers were obviously so ignorant of 
 everything, and so anxious and timid, that one can 
 set little store by their impressions of native char- 
 acter : a man may look very fierce and dangerous, 
 with a shaggy moustache and quite a museum of 
 lethal weapons adorning his person, and yet be 
 most reasonable and good-humoured when you 
 address him in a courteous style, and if you put a 
 touch of authority and confidence into it, so much 
 the better. 
 
 An experienced traveller, Mr. Barkley, in his Ride 
 through Asia Minor, p. 83, says very justly: "All 
 village Turks talk well for ignorant people, and when 
 paying you a visit behave quietly and well. They 
 
 1 Journey through Asia Minor pp. 32 and 40. 
 
30 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 will talk of horses, game, soldiering, farming, etc. ; 
 and from them the traveller may pick up a good 
 deal of useful information. But in these days (1878), 
 sooner or later the conversation is sure to turn upon 
 the iniquity of the ruling classes, and the Sultan, the 
 Grand Vizier, the provincial governors, great and 
 small, all will come in for violent abuse ; and, as the 
 same story is told in each village, it becomes 
 monotonous." 
 
 It is, of course, an absolute necessity to avoid 
 touching their deep-lying feelings as regards religion, 
 family life, and women. But if you feel in your 
 own heart a real sympathy for the people and 
 respect for what is best in them, you will never find 
 it necessary even to consciously think about how 
 to avoid violating their feelings on these subjects 
 (except in cases of sudden change to a different 
 and strange race, as on p. 120). No rule can be 
 given except to feel sympathetic, but no other 
 rule is needed, if you feel so. 
 
 Most of what I have to say on these subjects 
 belongs to the period before the recent Moham- 
 medan revival J had begun, or at least before it 
 affected the villagers. A serious change has been 
 prepared and brought about by degrees ; and I am 
 fully prepared to learn that the archaeologist's 
 trade has become a much harder one. And, as 
 
 1 See chapter vii. 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 3! 
 
 these lines are going through the press, the war 
 with Greece increases enormously the Mohammedan 
 reaction, and embitters relations between Christian 
 and Moslem. The expulsion and actual deporta- 
 tion of Greek subjects from Turkey, if it be carried 
 out completely, will produce a profound effect in 
 many ways. To take one single instance, many 
 of the officials of middle rank on the Ottoman 
 Railway are Greek subjects ; and, if they be all 
 expelled, it will be difficult to run the trains on the 
 line. 
 
 In respect of religious feeling or intolerance 
 there is a marked contrast between the village 
 Turks and the city Turks. In the villages you 
 rarely see any signs of bigotry or of dislike to 
 Christians. The people seemed never to have the 
 slightest objection to my going freely about their 
 mosques ; and, when I asked whether I need take 
 off my shoes, they generally assured me that it was 
 quite unnecessary. For a small consideration, a 
 dollar or two, they will permit the archaeologist to 
 make an excavation beside the mosque, or to saw 
 away part of a plank in the floor, when an inscrip- 
 tion is concealed under the soil or the wooden 
 flooring. Naturally, there must be a certain deli- 
 cacy shown in the preliminaries ; you find out who 
 is the man of most weight and influence in the 
 village, and talk to him privately ; you make it 
 
32 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 clear to him that there will be no real harm done 
 to the building, that the soil removed can be put 
 back again so that no one will know the difference, 
 or that the piece of plank which you want to saw 
 away is close to the wall and the want of it will 
 never be noticed ; and the objections, which he 
 makes at first, all disappear when you give him a 
 small coin and show him the larger sum which 
 shall be his, as soon as the obstacle is removed. 
 He will manage the other villagers. The women 
 are harder to deal with ; and, when they are roused 
 (which is only very rarely), the situation becomes 
 complicated, and one must trust to accident and 
 chance for some favourable opening. The man 
 of weight and influence, who could sway the other 
 men with a word, often shrinks and becomes dumb 
 when the women appear ; and the code of manners 
 forbids you to negotiate privately with a leader 
 among them. This is one of the difficulties from 
 which the archaeologist is saved by his wife's 
 company : the women then become almost always 
 favourable, and in many cases I have got freedom 
 in my wife's company to do what I should hardly 
 have been permitted to do alone. 
 
 Too much stress must not be laid on our experi- 
 ence. We were a holiday and a show to the village, 
 like a visit of Wombwell's Menagerie, Barnum's 
 Greatest Show on Earth, or Professor Pepper's 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 33 
 
 Ghost in a small country town in England. For 
 the time, the village was turned topsy-turvy ; the 
 gravest and steadiest heads felt the intoxication of 
 
 o 
 
 excitement and pleasure-going, combined with the 
 unwonted sensation of money-making ; a general 
 spirit of reckless gambling in precious stones seized 
 on everybody ; serious elderly men so far forgot 
 themselves as to walk quite at the rate of three and 
 a half miles per hour in search of some promising 
 stone which they remembered. The day would 
 furnish subject of conversation and legend for the 
 rest of their lives. In such circumstances the ordin- 
 ary restraints of religion were readily overstepped. 
 
 Moreover, it is not the deepest feelings that are 
 most readily revealed to passing strangers. And 
 though in 1883, and 1884, I saw life as it is in the 
 Turkish villages a great deal more intimately than 
 archaeologists usually see it, and far more intimately 
 than I did as a rule in later years, yet after all it 
 was only a superficial view that I got. The inner 
 life was, of course, concealed from the visitor of a 
 day. There are depths, too, in village life which I 
 have heard about, and which I wished to avoid 
 attempting to plumb. I was not investigating the 
 moral and social condition of the Turks, but seeking 
 for historical evidence ; and I had not then realised 
 how much ancient history still remains in Turkey, 
 clothed in Mohammedan forms, and called by 
 
 3 
 
34 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 Turkish or Arabic names (ch. xi.). The traveller 
 must always be careful to avoid concluding that 
 what he has not seen does not exist ; though it is 
 strange how little the most superficial travellers 
 recognise that. 
 
 Even among the Greek villagers I might in the 
 same way say that I saw few signs of hatred for the 
 Turks, and never among those who spoke only 
 Turkish. The latter could not be so sure that they 
 were unintelligible to any Turk, even though none 
 could be seen ; moreover, the use of Greek is a 
 bond of sympathy between strangers, which induces 
 confidence. But, as a rule, in talking with the 
 Greeks of the inner parts of Turkey, we had other 
 business in hand ; and I always rather avoided 
 drawing the Christians into conversation about their 
 feelings towards the Turks, for it could do no good, 
 and might lead to complications. It was almost as 
 rare an experience to hear in a Greek village ex- 
 pressions of hatred to Mohammedans in general, 
 as vice versa. Once in 1883, I found a Greek bakal 
 (keeper of a small retail shop or general store) who 
 had started trade in Islam-Keui. As he was turning 
 away from a group of Turks to show me something, 
 he muttered in a low voice, " abominations of Turks " 
 (inisemata Tourkori). But this was a solitary 
 instance in my experience; and his words may 
 have been caused by his unfortunate business 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 35 
 
 experience, for trade, even in a large village like 
 Islam-Keui, was very flat Purchasers were few, 
 and they had no money to pay ; promises (or 
 perhaps threats, I cannot say as to that case, but 
 know as regards some cases) were their only coin. 
 In 1883 I again passed through Islam-Keui some 
 months later, and asked for the bakal, as Greeks 
 have always better scent for antiquities than Turks. 
 He had given up business in despair : as my man 
 Murad said, "how could a shop exist in a village?" 
 And yet Islam-Keui ought to be a town of great 
 consequence, being the seat of a Mudir, and situated 
 beside the junction of many roads at the entrance 
 to a great pass 1 on one of the great trade-routes of 
 modern Turkey and of all history. 
 
 A good example of the easy tolerance of the 
 villagers occurred at Seurlar in the eastern Tchal 
 district, in 1 888, when my wife and I were travelling 
 without a tent. It was in Ramazan, the holy 
 month, when fasting throughout the long summer 
 day exalts the religious fervour and sharpens the 
 temper of the Turks ; but they welcomed us cordi- 
 ally, entertained us in an open room beside the 
 mosque, inside the sacred precinct, and actually 
 forming part of the sacred building. After their 
 evening meal, the elders assembled there, conversed 
 with us, performed their prayers in chorus before 
 
 1 Described on p. 62. 
 
36 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 us ; and at last, when we intimated our wish to rest, 
 they helped our men to hang up carpets across the 
 open side of the room, so that we might be entirely 
 private. 
 
 It is strange how religious feeling seems to grow 
 with numbers. It often struck me, sitting among 
 a small group of Turks, that perfect friendliness 
 reigned between us ; but, as more came in, a barrier 
 seemed to grow up, and the gulf between us seemed 
 to become present to the consciousness of all. So 
 in the towns and cities bigotry is far more marked 
 than in the villages. But even in the cities, I have 
 rarely experienced any real difficulty from religious 
 feeling among the Mohammedans. Once I was 
 assaulted with stones, but that was a mere farce. 
 I was riding in 1883 through a singularly unknown, 
 yet not a very remote country, north-east from Tchal, 
 accompanied only by a Greek servant. That is not a 
 good way ; but Prof. Sterrett and I had only one 
 Moslem servant. In one town, which contained a 
 Medresse (religious college), a crowd of boys pursued 
 and began to stone us. No grown-up person 
 showed himself, whom I might have held respon- 
 sible for the conduct of the boys ; and that in itself 
 was a bad sign of their feeling. I tried by a dis- 
 play of Christian patience to tempt them outside 
 the limits of the town ; but they would not venture 
 beyond the shadow of the last house, and I could 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 37 
 
 only turn and shake my whip in impotent wrath. I 
 felt pretty mad ; but it seemed best to ride on and 
 leave the town only half explored, as I had no one 
 but a Christian with me. 
 
 Among the more educated and wealthier Turks 
 in the country districts, a few cases came under my 
 notice of sour and arrogant fanaticism and loathing 
 of the Giaours ; and, naturally, one observed such 
 cases only where accident brought us into relations 
 with these unpleasing specimens. It is probable, 
 and even certain, that other cases escaped me, 
 because the strict Moslems avoided meeting me. For 
 example, I was several times at a village Tchardak ; 
 but only once came into relations with a hard and 
 surly Turk, a man of considerable wealth, and of 
 the strict religious type which is favoured under the 
 present regime and is therefore becoming fashion- 
 able. It happened in 1888 that my wife and I 
 arrived after a long day's ride, in uncertain and 
 showery weather. We were travelling without a 
 tent ; and it was therefore necessary to find a house. 
 All strangers in this village went to the Oda of this 
 rich and religious Turk, for hospitality was a 
 duty to him just as much as prayers. As a general 
 rule, Turks have been specially polite, when an 
 Ingleez lady was in the company ; and I was there- 
 fore surprised that our host held aloof persistently 
 and avoided bidding us welcome. Inquiring 
 
38 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 whether the host was absent, I learned that a 
 youngish-looking man, fairly tall, with the white 
 linen band round his fez which had made me take 
 him for the village hodja, was the host. This man 
 had given us the coldest and barest possible saluta- 
 tion, when we entered and sat down : he was one 
 of the new style of Turks, detesting Europeans 
 and all their ways ; when we had, however, come to 
 his house, his religion forbade him to turn us away. 
 We had already eaten food, viz., a fowl supplied by 
 him and cooked by one of our servants ; and he 
 had declined to receive payment, though the man 
 had been ordered to offer it. Had we heard sooner 
 of his character we might have done without any- 
 thing except the shelter of his roof ; the weather, 
 the time of our arrival and the distance of the near- 
 est village made us absolutely dependent on him 
 to that extent. I have never known food so nearly 
 choke me ; and I never spent a night in such an- 
 noyance, or was so glad to leave a house. This 
 was the only case in which a Turk was pointedly 
 and studiedly rude to me ; even at the time when 
 the English were most unpopular, in 1883 and 1884, 
 the officials preserved an outward show of politeness 
 while doing a good deal to cause inconvenience ; 
 and any people that may have strongly objected 
 to us contented themselves with ignoring us. 
 But, in a number of cases, wealthier Turks 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 39 
 
 showed us cordial hospitality and great attention ; 
 and this was the case chiefly in the remotest and 
 least sophisticated country districts. It is when he 
 is most unconscious and most natural that the Turk 
 is cordial and charming. When he begins to try to 
 think, he becomes disagreeable. Any educative 
 influences that are brought to bear upon the richer 
 class of Turks are, for the most part, either degrad- 
 ing to his character, or calculated to foster arro- 
 gance and fanaticism. 
 
 Of the city Turks I have hardly any knowledge ; 
 but that fact in itself tells a tale. In the cities the 
 archaeologist hardly ever comes into any relations 
 with the Mohammedans. The gulf that divides 
 Moslem and Christian is in them difficult to bridge 
 over ; and a casual visitor, coming for a day, has 
 rarely the opportunity of crossing it. 1 There is 
 much more opportunity of getting into relations 
 with the Mohammedans, if the archaeologist's wife 
 accompanies him, for that is a proof of rank and 
 standing and respectability, and, moreover, the rare 
 event of a European lady's advent rouses intense 
 curiosity among the Turkish ladies, and invitations 
 come. As a general rule, however, my visits to 
 cities were too short and hurried. There remains 
 much archaeological discovery to make in the great 
 cities ; the man who is to make it must have plenty 
 
 1 An exception on p. 291. 
 
40 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 of time, and must take with him a wife, possessed 
 of courage, tact, pleasant manners, and the moral 
 power that wins respect without exacting it. 
 
 With their simplicity and frankness, the villagers 
 were to rne an unfailing pleasure, especially after I 
 learned how to manage the fleas (p. 92). There 
 is great gravity and dignity and courtesy about the 
 middle-aged and elderly men, whom one meets in 
 the Oda. Differences of course exist ; and in some 
 villages people are far better than in others. In 
 this respect the variation is probably due to dif- 
 ference of race. Observant travellers, with a taste 
 for ethnology, might learn a great deal ; but, un- 
 fortunately, I did not become alive to this side of 
 my work till near the end. 
 
 There was also to me a great charm in the grave, 
 sober, measured intonation of Turkish conversation ; 
 and the language, with its sententiousness, its entire 
 want of relative pronouns and subordinating con- 
 junctions, was full of interest. I know no language 
 which gives such effect to a simple story by the 
 form in which it is expressed at least in conversa- 
 tion, for the expression is ill suited to written prose 
 style. For example, telling how a horseman rode 
 past without stopping, a Turk said to me, " He 
 came, he passed, he went " (geldi, getckdi, gitdi). If 
 he calls to a man to bring water, he says, " Water 
 take, come " (su al gel). In June, 1883, I was told 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 4! 
 
 of a village with " marbles in it " an hour to the 
 west away off the road. A sudden thunderstorm came 
 on : our way lay across fields, which after ten minutes' 
 downpour became seas of liquid mud, intersected 
 by several watercourses, deep ditches with steep 
 sides five to ten feet high, down which the horses 
 slid, and up which they contrived to scramble in 
 some mysterious way after several vain attempts 
 and with many slips. We got through without 
 mishap, strange to say, taking an hour and a half 
 to do an easy hour's distance. The village was 
 a miserable set of four or five small houses ; in the 
 wall of one was a scrap of marble. As we circled 
 round the last house, my man said, " We have come, 
 we have seen, there is not " (geldik^ geurduk, yok) ; 
 and we silently turned to the north. 
 
 It is only the elderly men whom one meets in the 
 Oda ; and undoubtedly, part of the reason why the 
 villagers impress one so favourably is that there are 
 so few young men at home. A group of young 
 rustics, loutish, awkward, ignorant, rude, is a spectacle 
 that you rarely see ; but some examples come be- 
 fore you of the horseplay, coarse and even filthy in 
 character, which furnishes their amusement. The 
 squads of recruits whom one occasionally meets 
 are capable of much harm, an example of which 
 is given on p. 205. From what I have in some 
 rare cases seen, and from what I have heard on un- 
 
42 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 impeachable authority, it is clear how much is gained 
 from the absence of the young men in most cases. 
 The requirements of military service take many 
 away. Others are sent by their family to some of 
 the great cities, where a little money can be earned 
 by serving as porters or in some other humble em- 
 ployment : at home, of course, there is no possible 
 way by which a halfpenny could be earned by the 
 utmost industry, for nobody wants any work done, 
 and nobody posesses any money to pay for work, if 
 he wanted it. 
 
 Coined money, even in the smallest quantities, 
 simply does not exist in villages. At first I could 
 not realise it in spite of warnings, and was disposed 
 at times to think that the villagers were trying to 
 extort a dollar on the plea of having no change. 
 But that idea cannot last in the face of what occurs ; 
 for example, you find a man ready to walk beside 
 your party an hour's journey in order to get the 
 change (to his own disadvantage) at a market 
 town where a shop exists. There are no shops, 
 no circulation of money, no possibility of exchang- 
 ing the fruits of labour for pleasures, or luxuries, 
 or any variety from the simplest and barest neces- 
 sities of life. This may seem an idyllic style of 
 life to some social theorists ; but I should be glad 
 to make them travel continuously for three years 
 among Turkish villages, so that they may realise 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 43 
 
 what the want of sale implies. The shop cannot 
 exist because there is no money to buy from it, 
 and no security for earnings if money could be 
 got ; robbery is indeed rare in the villages at 
 present, because there is absolutely nothing to 
 steal ; but few men would care to be known as the 
 only person in a village that possessed some money 
 and articles for sale. Moreover, if the shopkeeper 
 escaped open robbery, he would be a prey to the 
 extortionate demands of every zaptieh (policeman). 
 No one tries to earn : there is nothing to earn, 
 and, if he could earn anything, the zaptiehs would 
 hear of it and exact heavy toll on it. 
 
 The worst consequence of this want of work is 
 the idleness and ignorance in which the men grow 
 up. The women do all the field work, necessary to 
 grow the year's supply of food ; the men lounge 
 about in laziness or in mischief, until conscription 
 calls them away, or family embarrassment drives 
 them to Smyrna or some such place. Then their 
 education commences : they begin to have the 
 training of real, steady work, and often the vulgar 
 and objectionable lout develops easily into a 
 trustworthy and good man. Wherever any work 
 has to be done for which absolute honesty is required, 
 there it is always a Turk that is employed : they 
 are the human watchdogs whom every one employs 
 and trusts. If you sent any ordinary poor Turk, 
 
44 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 picked up by accident, to carry ;ioo to some place, 
 it is wonderful in how many cases it would be de- 
 livered safely and intact by a man to whom 5 
 represents a fortune ; and not merely would he 
 carry it safe, but he would as a rule defend it, if 
 attacked, and fight till he dropped. 
 
 Nothing is ever repaired in Turkey. A building 
 once made is allowed to stand until it becomes un- 
 inhabitable. In the better houses, the ground floor 
 is used for stables and lumber-room, and the dwell- 
 ing rooms are all on the upper floor. If one of the 
 steps in the wooden ladder or staircase that leads 
 to the dwelling-rooms is broken, you must make a 
 greater effort at that point, such is the will of God : 
 so long as it is possible to ascend, things will be 
 left untouched. Apparently, when a house decays, 
 it is preferred to build a new one elsewhere. Hence 
 the traveller is often struck by the number of ruined 
 hovels, through which he has to pass before reach- 
 ing the inhabited part of a town. Konia, for 
 example, seems to be a city of the dead, if you 
 enter it from some directions, for you ride through 
 streets of roofless, empty, mud-brick houses. The 
 author of Anadol speaks at Kaisari about " the 
 neglected aspect ; great khans are deserted and 
 crumbling to ruins, warehouses empty, bazaars only 
 half occupied, and not a street without its rows of 
 uninhabited houses, and many gaps where houses 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 45 
 
 had fallen altogether ... all displayed a depressed 
 and languishing appearance, as if life were fast 
 waning from Caesarea ". In 1890 the parts of 
 Kaisari which I saw were much better : the develop- 
 ment of Armenian activity in recent years had 
 caused a general renovation. 
 
 Thus almost everything in Turkey, whether 
 public or private property, with few exceptions 
 (and those usually directed by Europeans), goes 
 surely to ruin. 
 
 Akhmet, a Koniali (from a village, eleven hours 
 west of Konia), who was one of our men in 1886, 
 had served seven years as a soldier, had risen to 
 the rank of sergeant, had gone through the earlier 
 stages of the Russian war, and the siege of 
 Plevna ; he had been taken prisoner when Plevna 
 was captured (one of 140 men who survived out 
 of a regiment 700 strong), and had been released 
 at the end of the war. During his seven years of 
 service, he had received one dollar as pay. He 
 was an excellent specimen of a village Turk : ab- 
 solutely trustworthy, strong, slow, steady, modest, 
 quiet, perfectly well-behaved, and perfectly useless 
 in all the departments of work where any skill or 
 readiness was required. When he came to a village, 
 instead of putting on some show and making an 
 impression of importance, he would take the hum- 
 blest inhabitant aside and inquire in a whisper where 
 
46 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 he could procure milk, a fowl, etc. He never knew 
 what to do or to say beyond his ordinary round of 
 duties ; he could never learn to distinguish between 
 a stone without letters and a " written stone " ; he 
 never could see why I looked at such things, and 
 much as he tried, never could feel the faintest 
 interest in them (even though he knew bakshish 
 rewarded every discovery). 
 
 But the Turks are not by any means absolutely 
 uniform in character. In 1884 we had a man from 
 a village east of Kaisari in Cappadocia. His name 
 was Omar ; and he usually answered to the name 
 of Hadji. But his pilgrimage had not been to 
 Mecca ; he had merely visited some Armenian 
 sacred place, which I forget ; and that in itself is 
 a remarkable fact. There is a certain awe attached 
 even among the Moslem peasantry to the old holy 
 places of the Christians ; 1 and they believe that 
 some supernatural power resides in them, and some 
 merit is gained by visiting them. Such a belief is 
 quite generally recognised as regards Jerusalem, 
 and many Turks have mentioned it to me ; but, as 
 regards other places, the respect felt seems to be 
 merely a local superstition, which would not be 
 generally approved. 
 
 Hadji Omar was the ablest and most useful man 
 whom I ever had with me. He was moderately 
 
 1 Chapter xi. 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 47 
 
 tall, about 5 ft. 1 1 in., fair of hair and complexion, 
 quick at picking up new ideas and methods, adapt- 
 ing himself easily to new circumstances. He 
 thoroughly recognised that his business was to find 
 inscriptions ; and he literally left no stone un- 
 turned. Everything he was told to do was done 
 well ; and he showed himself in a great variety 
 of characters during our four and a half months' 
 travelling, ending up with a public sale of horses, 
 in which he proved a most skilful auctioneer. He 
 possessed that character which English people, when 
 they see it in other nations, stigmatise as grasp- 
 ing, but which in themselves they consider as a 
 proper regard for their own interest. The Hadji 
 had his way to make in the world ; the connection 
 with us gave him his first chance in life, and he was 
 resolved to use it. He realised from his service a 
 number of pounds, which would enable him to retire 
 to his own country and live as a man of wealth for 
 the future. Money which once touched his palm 
 never left it except to enter the folds of his girdle ; 
 but he was strict in his accounts ; and if he exacted 
 a full toll for all that he did as for example the 
 auctioneer's percentage on the selling-price of every 
 horse it was done in a strictly business way ; and 
 I have never had such pleasure in giving any man 
 his baksheesh, as I had in giving him quadruple my 
 usual amount. He never shirked any work imposed 
 
48 TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 on him, and he never grumbled at any fatigue. 
 That it was all done from regard for his own ulti- 
 mate advantage is doubtless true ; but it was an 
 enlightened self-interest that ruled his action. If 
 a flower could be found within a mile of the camp, 
 he had a nosegay ready for my wife every morning. 
 
 He had undoubtedly in him the capacity for 
 cruelty ; and it would go hard with any man who 
 stood between him and his advantage. He seemed 
 to me to have about him far more of the European 
 than of the Asiatic character. I have always sus- 
 pected him of being a Kurd, rather than a Turk ; 
 and another man whom I had with me and who 
 hated the Hadji with a desperate hatred, a Turk 
 from Bosnia and a good man himself, always de- 
 clared that Omar was no Turk and a sham Hadji. 
 Good luck to the Hadji ; and when next I travel, 
 may I find another like him. 
 
 Yet, if I ever come to be in a really dangerous 
 situation, it would be the rather stupid but abso- 
 lutely honest Koniali, and not the much abler 
 Kaisarli, that I should wish to have beside me if I 
 could not have both. There lies the reason why I 
 have always such affection for the Turkish villager. 
 A nation, to be great and self-sufficient, must consist 
 of more than faithful watchdogs ; but those who 
 have known the need of them will never undervalue 
 the watchdogs. 
 
TURKISH VILLAGE LIFE IN ASIA MINOR 49 
 
 But the two examples I have selected are better 
 by far than the average. To make the balance 
 more even, let me add that the most repulsive and 
 detestable of all the men I ever had about me was 
 a mulatto Turk, of huge bulk and hideous face, 
 utterly untrustworthy, lazy, and useless, not wholly 
 stupid, but so incapable of honest service that his 
 work never could be good. 
 
 In one respect a strong contrast between the 
 average Turkish and Greek villages impressed me. 
 In Turkish villages the women, so far as I can 
 judge from sight and report, are feebler and poorer 
 in both physique and mind (owing to their hard 
 lot in childhood); whereas the Greek women struck 
 me as being better and morally higher than the 
 men, physically good and intellectually well 
 developed. Therein lies the future of the two 
 races. In the one case you have a rich soil from 
 which future generations acquire strength and 
 moral vigour ; in the other a stunted and im- 
 poverished motherhood produces a poor and 
 diminishing people. In the condition of the 
 Turkish women lies the reason for the steady 
 degeneration of the Turkish people. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA : I. THE WAY OUT. 
 
 THE best way of showing how the accidents of 
 travel and the character of the Turks and Turk- 
 mens come before the traveller is to describe a 
 single excursion, and attempt to bring out a few 
 of the varied thoughts that rise in one's mind amid 
 the scenery and the men that one is thrown among. 
 As this requires a certain breadth of treatment, I 
 select the shortest excursion that I ever made, 
 when, owing to engagements at home, I had at the 
 utmost only twenty days at my disposal to go from 
 and return to Smyrna. In many ways it was the 
 least productive and the most fatiguing excursion 
 that I was ever engaged in, because a long distance 
 had to be traversed in a very short time, and if you 
 want to make discoveries you must be prepared to 
 apply patience and leisure, and to spend days 
 where on this occasion I spent hours. For clear- 
 ness' sake the narrative is numbered as a diary. 
 I. In July, 1888, a short excursion was needed 
 to verify a report about an undiscovered monument 
 in Northern Phrygia. Before starting from the 
 (50) 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 51 
 
 railway terminus at Serai-Keui I went to Smyrna 
 for a day, to see my wife off in the Messageries 
 steamer, leaving my men to await my return. On 
 the third day, when the train arrived, two Turkish 
 servants with three horses were standing ready. 
 We got off at once, and rode away over the valley, 
 crossing the narrow Lycos river, a muddy and 
 apparently deep stream, flowing between steep 
 banks about ten feet high or more, like a big 
 ditch. It is easily bridged, even by Turks, with a 
 few pine trunks and cross planks ; but, narrow 
 though it be, it is quite unfordable. The Crusaders 
 under King Louis could ford the broad Maeander, 
 not far away ; but I doubt if they could have 
 crossed the Lycos, insignificant though it be, with- 
 out a bridge ; those steep high banks, and the soft 
 mud of the channel, seem a hopeless obstacle. 
 
 It is difficult, and it would be unfair to a most 
 " gallant feat of arms," to go across the Maeander 
 or Lycos valley without thinking of that New 
 Year's Day in 1 148, when the French army 1 had 
 the deep Maeander in front of them, with a Turkish 
 army drawn up on the opposite bank. The Maean- 
 
 1 Nicetas describes this brilliant action as performed by Conrad 
 and his army ; in that case the crossing would have been in the 
 Lycos valley. But he is wrong (see my Cities and Bishoprics of 
 Phrygia, p. 162), having confused the two allied armies. Conrad 
 turned back before reaching the Maeander. Louis crossed lower 
 down the river. 
 
52 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 der, difficult to cross at any time, was believed to 
 be quite unfordable at that season ; there were no 
 boats, and the bridge had been destroyed. But 
 Louis himself set the example, and his army 
 marched down into the stream, across it, up the 
 other bank, and over or through the opposing 
 Turks. 
 
 It is three hours' ride across the Lycos valley to 
 where the steep ascent begins up the mountains 
 on the northern side. On the outer fringe lies 
 Hierapolis with its white cascade of rocks shining 
 in the sun, about six miles to the right of the point 
 where we began to ascend. After an hour's climb 
 we reached a little village beside the path, where 
 my other servant was expecting us. His orders 
 had been to start from Serai-Keui in the forenoon, 
 and have everything ready for us when we arrived 
 between eight and nine o'clock at night. He had 
 charge of one baggage horse, while he rode the 
 horse which until three days ago had been used by 
 Mrs. Ramsay. I wanted to make a very rapid 
 journey, and kept all equipment as light as 
 possible, so that we had still exactly the same 
 number of horses and servants, as when she was 
 with us. But it is one thing to give orders in 
 Turkey, and a very different thing to have them 
 executed when you are far away. We found our 
 man (who in many respects was an unusually 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 53 
 
 active and useful Turk) sitting among the villagers ; 
 nothing had been unpacked, no preparations made, 
 no fowl purchased. As he explained, there had 
 not been time to do anything when he saw us 
 coming across the valley ; and he waited to see 
 whether I still wanted him to carry out the orders. 
 At that hour it was too late to prepare anything ; 
 sardines and tea, the usual stand-by on a late 
 arrival, furnished a hurried meal. 
 
 Our quarters were very picturesque. A small 
 platform of rough planks was fixed under the 
 shadow of two overarching trees ; and the hillside 
 was so steep that from the outer edge of the plat- 
 form there was a drop of some hundred feet. 
 Round the platform ran a low balustrade. Here 
 the village men usually sat in the cool shade with 
 a splendid outlook across the plain to the southern 
 mountains, where Kadmos and Salbakos, both still 
 crowned with snow, stood up from the valley 
 (550 feet above sea level in the middle) to a 
 height of over 8000 feet. The change from the 
 heat and dust of Smyrna and the railway carriage 
 and the valley, to this rustic seat on the side of 
 the hill, was delightful. 
 
 II. Early in the morning we reached the summit 
 of the hills that bound the Lycos valley. The 
 muleteer was sent on from here to Demirji-Keui 
 (where the whole district Tchal used to go for 
 
54 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 a blacksmith, demirji). He had strict orders to 
 be better prepared this evening ; and I made sure 
 that he bought a fowl before we left the village. 
 The rest of us were to visit various villages, and 
 to reach Demirji-Keui in the evening. At this 
 point we were supposed to be half-way between 
 Serai-Keui and Demirji-Keui, six hours from each. 
 
 At this point the traveller appreciates the true 
 character of the Lycos valley. He stands here on 
 the rim of that great plateau, 3000 to 5000 feet in 
 height, which forms the main mass of Asia Minor, 
 and^ from which protrude, like fingers stretched to 
 the west, mountain chains reaching to the ^gean 
 Sea, and often extending far out as narrow penin- 
 sulas into the sea. He sees that the glen of the 
 Lycos is a deep hole in the side of this plateau, 
 sloping upwards and eastwards as it narrows, 
 like a funnel leading up to the level of the plateau. 
 North of it and south of it the plateau sweeps on- 
 ward to the west. 
 
 The great plateau is bordered all round by an 
 irregular rim of mountains, like the sides of a 
 billiard-table, broken only by occasional narrow 
 gorges, through which rivers force their passage 
 into the low coast valleys. Where we ascended, 
 the rim is about 4000 feet high ; and from it we 
 have an extensive view to the north over the 
 plateau. This part of the plateau is a great 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 55 
 
 plain called Banaz-Ova, about thirty-five miles 
 by twenty-five, over which lies our journey for 
 some days. You look across it to Mount Dindy- 
 mos on the north, and Burgas Dagh on the 
 east ; and, as you look from here, the plain seems 
 flat and riverless and treeless. But when you 
 travel across it, you find that it is intersected by 
 great canons. The streams which come down into 
 the plain, flow at first near its level ; but gradually 
 their channels grow deeper, as they converge 
 towards the south-west, until they become canons 
 with almost perpendicular sides, 200, 500, 1000 
 feet in height. At last all the canons are merged 
 in that of the Mseander, which breaks through 
 the mountain rim at the south-west corner into the 
 Lycos valley in a gorge of wonderful grandeur 
 and beauty, well worth a tourist's journey. 
 
 The broken country in the southern part of the 
 Banaz-Ova, near the Maeander, is the rich and 
 fertile district of Tchal, in which we were to spend 
 the next twenty-four hours. 
 
 At lunch that day, in a village Ak-Dere-Devrent 
 (Guardhouse on the White Gorge), I was told that 
 some stones, covered with figures and writing, 
 had recently been found in a field below Geuzlar 
 (the Arches). I listened almost with sorrow, for 
 Demirji-Keui was four hours to the east and 
 Geuzlar three hours to the west of us ; when I 
 
56 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 heard of the stones it was already past two o'clock ; 
 reports of this kind in many cases turn out to be 
 false or exaggerated ; and I was hurrying towards 
 the north. But a man, whose conversation showed 
 quite unusual knowledge for a Turk, assured me 
 that these stones were remarkable ; and I could not 
 pass them by. One of my men was sent off to 
 Demirji-Keui ; if I did not appear there in the 
 evening, the muleteer and he were instructed to 
 meet us on the following evening at Duman, a 
 village about six hours north from Demirji-Keui ; 
 the other man and I went off to the " Arches ". 
 The track was bad, winding in some places along 
 the edge of steep ravines, and could not safely be 
 traversed in the dark. At the village I found a 
 man to take me to the stones, which lay in a field, 
 a mile beyond : they were two huge slabs of marble, 
 containing rude reliefs of a religious character, and 
 lists of subscribers, all with their portraits ; a point 
 in topography, hitherto controverted and obscure, 
 was illuminated by the inscriptions, and I felt 
 rewarded. Had there been more time, I should 
 have made drawings ; but that would have required 
 most of the next day, and in my hurry the stones 
 seemed not to deserve such honour. In their 
 position they could not be photographed, even if 
 I had had a camera. 
 
 The sun's rays were still touching the top of the 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 57 
 
 walls of the huge gorge, breaking down towards 
 the Maeander, at the head of which stands Geuzlar, 
 as we left the stones, and climbed up the steep 
 ascent to the village, where my man waited with 
 our horses. As it was impossible to reach camp 
 that night, he had been ordered to find quarters in 
 the village, buy whatever could be got, and prepare 
 dinner. 
 
 The village occupies an extraordinarily secluded 
 and retired position, considering how near it is 
 to the railway and the great trade-route, which 
 runs through the Lycos valley on its way from the 
 far East to the ^Egean Sea. Owing to the inter- 
 ruption of communication by the great canon of the 
 Maeander, which breaks through the mountains a 
 little to the west, Geuzlar lies at its world's end, 
 and you cannot take it on the way to anywhere 
 else ; to reach it the traveller must turn his back 
 on the rest of the world, and to leave it he must 
 go back the way he came (unless he descends its 
 gorge into the canon of the Maeander, and then 
 finds his way out of that, which is possible for one 
 who loves to go, where no one else ever goes, by a 
 path of singular grandeur). In this remote position, 
 so unknown that I did not learn of its existence 
 until 1888, Geuzlar became the refuge of a rem- 
 nant of some old population, which has been ex- 
 terminated elsewhere. Its people would be a 
 
58 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 study for an ethnologist ; and I hope that Dr. Von 
 Luschan, who has devoted such care and skill to 
 the study of the Lycian peoples, will visit it They 
 are small in stature ; I saw no one who seemed 
 over about five feet four ; whereas, in general, the 
 Turks of Anatolia, especially those of the moun- 
 tains, are a big, powerful race. They are also 
 peculiarly ugly in face, which is far from being the 
 case with the Turks ; and yet there was ascertain 
 good-natured look about them. One almost 
 unique fact was that in this rather large village, 
 they declared there was no guest-house (Musafir- 
 Oda]. My man met me with this news ; as he 
 could find no house, he had thought it unnecessary 
 to look after food ; but he had put the horses in a 
 stable. 
 
 When I insisted that there must be some 
 place where strangers could spend the night, they 
 conducted us to a low lean-to shanty, beside a 
 midden, with a door through which a large-sized 
 dog could have just entered without stooping, a 
 shanty in which no decent person would have 
 housed a dog ; and gravely proposed that we 
 should spend the night there. My Turk was in 
 despair, and seemed inclined to make the best of 
 this kennel. Luckily, as we came along I had 
 observed a fine airy verandah in front of a good 
 house ; and I explained to them that I was going 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 59 
 
 to spend the night in that verandah, and would 
 pay for the accommodation. They were not very 
 willing, and my man after some whispering said 
 to me that it was impossible, for there was a 
 woman in the house. But, as no woman could 
 be seen from outside, I went up the ladder stairs, 
 telling the man to make a bargain. Had there 
 been a woman in sight, it would have been 
 rudeness to insist ; but, so long as no signs of one 
 were visible, I was within a guest's right to ac- 
 commodation. Meanwhile I sat down on the floor 
 of the verandah to wait till things arranged them- 
 selves, as they always do in Turkey if you are clear 
 about what you want. What became of the 
 woman inside the house I did not learn ; but I 
 was resolved not to quit the verandah, except to 
 go to an inhabitable place. The negotiations took 
 some time ; so we again dined off sardines and 
 tea, but had to be content with unleavened 
 bread from the village in place of the supply of 
 good bread from Serai- Keui, which had gone on 
 with the pack horse. 
 
 Another unusual characteristic of this village was 
 that no one came to speak to us or look at us that 
 evening or the next morning. Only the owner 
 came for his rent (about two shillings). That is 
 the only village in Turkey where I spent a night 
 without hearing a word of welcome or of farewell. 
 
60 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 In several other villages of Tchal, the people 
 seemed to me ruder than ordinary Turks ; and 
 racial difference is undoubtedly the reason. 
 
 III. On this day we went four hours eastwards 
 over country broken by deep gorges, down which 
 in time of rain torrents run north to the Mseander ; 
 and then turned towards north-east, and at last 
 north, through various villages, wondering as we 
 rode whether the other men would understand the 
 instructions, and also whether the Kaimmakam 
 would allow them to obey. We crossed the canon 
 of the Maeander, at a point where the river is 
 about 1600 feet above sea level ; and soon after 
 heard at a village that our men had passed on 
 their way to Duman, two hours further north. 
 Duman was once perhaps the Phrygian village 
 Tymion, where the Montanists pitched their " New 
 Jerusalem," calling on all true Christians to come 
 out from among the nations and dwell apart. It 
 lies among hills, full 3500 feet above the sea, in 
 a glen sloping down to the east ; and among its 
 semi-nomadic people, with flocks all around, we 
 found, as always among nomads (except some 
 Kurds), a most hospitable welcome. 
 
 IV. From Duman we descended the glen to the 
 open level stretch of the Banaz-Ova, and for two 
 days rode north by east over the plain, choosing a 
 line untraversed before, which proved unremunera- 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 6 1 
 
 tive, and touched hardly any villages. Early on the 
 first day we went through the site of Justinianopolis, 
 which was founded by Justinian, after he had de- 
 stroyed with fire and sword the remnants of the 
 old Montanist sect and their city Pepouza. A line 
 a little further east would have touched more 
 villages, where remains brought from the three old 
 cities that formerly stood on the east edge of 
 Banaz-Ova might be expected ; but wisdom came 
 too late. One valueless inscription was found in 
 a village where we spent the night. 
 
 V. On the fifth day at noon we reached the 
 site of Keramon-Agora, at the north-east corner 
 of Banaz-Ova, that " great and peopled city " where 
 Xenophon and the Ten Thousand spent a night. 
 I recopied and greatly improved the text of the 
 difficult inscription in which a third century 
 Christian gave a small piece of ground to his 
 church in its legally organised form as a benefit 
 and burial society, with provision for workmen 
 to keep it in order, on condition that the grave 
 of his wife should be kept blooming with roses ; 
 and found several unimportant stones which had 
 escaped us in 1881 and 1883. Of the ancient city 
 nothing remains visible above ground except 
 scattered stones. Part of the afternoon was given 
 to a little excursion to two villages a few miles to 
 the west, which I had on former occasions passed 
 
62 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 by unvisited ; but this produced only six insignifi- 
 cant epitaphs. 
 
 VI. This forenoon, our road lay up one of the 
 great passes of history, or rather a pass never 
 actually mentioned in history, but great in actual 
 fact. A number of roads from the west and south 
 meet near Keramon-Agora, ascend the glen down 
 which Hammam-Su (Bath-River) flows into Banaz- 
 Ova, and diverge towards north and east on the 
 high ground above the sources of that river. Al- 
 though my aim had always been to try new routes 
 every journey, yet this was the eighth time I had 
 gone up or down that pass ; and here, in the first 
 village we came to after leaving Keramon-Agora, 
 I made the best find of this journey, and one of the 
 most important that has ever fallen to my lot. 
 Having often been in this village, I did not intend 
 to stop there ; but, as we rode through, we halted 
 for a moment to speak to a native who recognised 
 me from of old. He told us of a new " written 
 stone " ; and we dismounted and went under his 
 charge to a good house, with a verandah, one of 
 whose supporting columns rested on the inscribed 
 face of an ancient marble, concealing great part of 
 the letters. Enough, however, remained to show the 
 general drift and most of the important details of 
 the text. It was an inscription erected by the 
 synagogue in honour of a woman, Julia Severa, who 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 63 
 
 had built a new place of worship for them. In 
 itself it seems, and is, a poor thing, but in the 
 proper point of view it reveals to us a singularly 
 important and interesting chapter of history. 
 
 In the third and second centuries B.C., many 
 thousands of families of Jews from Babylonia were 
 settled as colonists in the cities, which the Seleucid 
 kings built or re-organised to be loyal garrisons and 
 centres of the new civilising influence, in this alien 
 and barbarian land of Phrygia. These Jews are 
 often referred to in the Talmud, which complains 
 that " the baths and wines of Phrygia had separated 
 the Ten Tribes from their brethren ". We know 
 from the Book of Acts that they had great influ- 
 ence in such Phrygian cities as Antioch and 
 Iconium, and we learn from Cicero that their 
 numbers in his time were very great. All modern 
 experience suggests that a Jewish population like 
 this must have exercised a profound influence on 
 the development of the country. Further, there 
 was also a considerable Jewish population in the 
 chief Italian cities, and in several other parts of the 
 Roman empire. The question suggests itself, 
 whether there was a Jewish aristocracy in the 
 Roman world. The attempt to answer that ques- 
 tion was made almost hopeless by the fact that 
 these Jews adopted Greek or Roman names and 
 manners ; and were therefore undistinguishable 
 
64 AN EXCURSION IN PMRYGIA 
 
 from Greeks and Romans in the superficial view 
 which alone was permitted us in the dearth of 
 evidence. 
 
 The foundations of an answer to this question, 
 so far as concerns Phrygia, are laid by this in- 
 scription. Julia Severa, who is mentioned in it as a 
 leader and benefactor among the Jewish people, 
 is named frequently on coins of Akmonia. In no 
 other case is any single individual mentioned so 
 often on the coins of any city in the country. 
 If she was a Jewess, the Jews must have enjoyed 
 great influence and honour in Akmonia; and from 
 this beginning we are led on through a series of 
 identifications to the theory of Jewish power in 
 Phrygia, which is stated in my chapter on " The 
 Jews in Phrygia". 1 I have been told that a 
 distinguished German scholar has found a new 
 inscription throwing much additional and corro- 
 borative light on the subject. 
 
 Late in the afternoon we reached a considerable 
 village, where I felt much inclined to halt for the 
 night ; but as it wanted still a full hour to sunset, 
 and a village Hamil-Keui was reported an hour 
 ahead, we very unwillingly rode on, leaving one of 
 the men to make sure that the muleteer, who was 
 some distance behind, should come on to Hamil- 
 Keui. We had to cross a ridge of bare hills, of no 
 
 1 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, ch. xv. 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 65 
 
 great height ; a thunderstorm came on when we 
 were near the top, and in the heavy rain we lost 
 the sense of direction, and wandered away to the 
 east, instead of keeping north-east. We struck a 
 river, which, as I knew, flowed in the direction we 
 were going ; but the existing maps did not show 
 that here it makes a great loop, flowing round 
 two-thirds of a circle. We went round with it, and 
 at last saw a village half a mile up from the stream. 
 Despairing of ever reaching Hamil-Keui, we went 
 to this village, and found that we were at Hamil- 
 Keui, and that our packs had arrived an hour ago. 
 I had never made such an egregious error, or so 
 entirely lost the estimate of locality, since 1881, 
 when after sunset on a late November evening we 
 found ourselves wandering over the Banaz-Ova in 
 search of Suleimanli, without any idea whether it 
 lay west or south or north. 
 
 Hamil-Keui was a fair specimen of the Turkish 
 tchiftlik village, where the land is not village pro- 
 perty, but is in private hands. As a general rule, 
 when, on entering a village, you are struck with the 
 appearance of extreme dilapidation, discomfort and 
 wretchedness, the houses being mere small huts of 
 the poorest, lowest and most sordid type, con- 
 structed apparently of little except mud and thatch, 
 you will be told, if you ask the question, that this is 
 a tchiftlik. There are exceptions, not merely those 
 
 5 
 
66 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 which belong to Christians, like that described on 
 p. 132, but occasionally on estates owned by Turks. 
 At Buldur, a large town on Lake Askania, I met a 
 very intelligent young Turk in 1884, who had some 
 education, spoke a little French, was the son of a 
 once well-known Pasha of liberal tendencies, and held 
 some official position in a sort of honorary banish- 
 ment from Constantinople. He told me of ruins 
 on his estate, six hours to the south ; and on his 
 invitation I went there for a day, and was struck 
 with the air of activity, and the higher standard of 
 comfort and equipment, pervading the establishment. 
 But, as a rule, the tchiftliks owned by Turks are 
 of a very different character (except in the case of 
 the old-fashioned proprietors who live on their own 
 estate among their tenants). The people cultivate 
 the soil on the metayer system, their houses are 
 given them by the lord of the manor, and every- 
 thing and every person wears an air of depression 
 and squalor. This statement, which results from 
 years of observation in Asia Minor, agrees exactly 
 with what an authority of far greater experience, 
 " A Consul's Daughter and Wife," says about the 
 tchiftliks of Macedonia j 1 there is only this difference 
 that in Macedonia " the tenants are with few ex- 
 ceptions Christians," in Asia Minor they are Turks 
 (so far as my experience goes). 
 
 J See The People of Turkey, i., p. 205 if. 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 67 
 
 There was no guest-house in Hamil-Keui. See- 
 ing the hovel in front of which the muleteer was 
 standing, little better than the kennel in which the 
 people of Geuzlar had proposed to put us, I asked 
 with horror if this were the Oda : the whole con- 
 course replied that here there was not a village but 
 a tchiftlik, obviously implying that such a luxury 
 as an Oda could not exist on a tchiftlik. On a 
 fine night I would have camped out rather than 
 enter that squalid hole, where there was hardly room 
 to turn and just room to stand upright ; but rain 
 was still heavy, and shelter was absolutely necessary. 
 I insisted on seeing some other houses ; but all 
 were the same ; and there was nothing for it but to 
 be content with Hamil-Keui, and learn by practical 
 experience the difference between land cultivated 
 for the benefit of a landlord, and land cultivated for 
 the benefit of the cultivators. 
 
 VII. This day we went by a picturesque road 
 down the river. This is the main stream of the 
 Tembris or Tembrogius, called lower down Porsuk- 
 Su, from a tchiftlik in a remarkable situation on 
 the river bank, where it issues from a mountain- 
 gorge a little above Kutaya. Porsuk is an old 
 Turkish personal name, grecized by Anna Comnena 
 as Prosoukhos ; but all the map-drawers and 
 travellers call the river Pursak or Pursek. Two 
 hours below Hamil-Keui the Tembris issues from the 
 
68 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 hills into a great valley, once inhabited by the 
 people Praipenisseis. As it issues out of its narrow 
 glen it flows past a large tumulus, round which is 
 a village called Besh-Karish-Eyuk (Five-Span- 
 Mound). A legend which I omitted to note down 
 is connected with this mound. So far as I was able 
 to judge, folk tales are poor and uninteresting 
 among the Turks ; but it requires wider knowledge 
 and greater freedom in the Turkish language than 
 I possess to gather the materials for a correct 
 judgment on this subject. 
 
 One and a half hours across the plain brought us 
 to Altun-Tash (Gold-Stone), chief village of the 
 district, and half-way halting place between Kutaya 
 and Afiom-Kara-Hissar. It is full of inscriptions, 
 most of which are disappointing. Here we spent 
 two hours about noon. In the afternoon, at a 
 village Tchakirsaz, one hour to the east of Altuntash, 
 inscriptions detained us some time. One was the 
 quarry mark on a block of Synnadic marble, 
 showing that the marble of those quarries was not 
 merely carried to Rome, but also sold in other 
 directions. The others were unimportant and 
 difficult epitaphs, one of which had some turns of 
 expression, suggesting Christian origin ; but in 
 its fragmentary condition, certainty was impossible. 
 This great valley was one of the chief centres of 
 Christianity in Phrygia during the third century ; 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 69 
 
 and a considerable number of Christian epitaphs 
 are found in it. 
 
 After leaving Tchakirsaz, we crossed the line of 
 the new road leading direct from Kutaya to Afiom- 
 Kara-Hissar. Though occasionally one finds a 
 good new road, built by some European in the 
 government service, the great majority of the roads 
 which have been made in recent years in Asia 
 Minor are bad. In more cases than one, the line 
 of the new road was indicated to our eyes by 
 the deeper green of a more luxuriant crop of grass ; 
 the natives carefully avoided it, because its surface 
 was not so good for horses' feet ; and the track 
 which they followed kept away from the road, only 
 cutting across it occasionally. It is quite common 
 to find an isolated piece of modern road without 
 beginning or end. It is still commoner to find an 
 elevated causeway, built at great expense, leading 
 to the bank of a ravine or stream, in preparation for 
 a bridge ; but the bridge has never been built, and, 
 if you are not looking ahead, you are discomposed 
 by your horse coming to a sudden halt, with his 
 fore legs planted firm, refusing to make the next 
 step, which would precipitate him into the yawning 
 chasm. When a new road is projected, an entirely 
 new line is selected, often one that requires 
 engineering works of some magnitude : scraps of 
 the road are made by forced labour : a certain 
 
70 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 amount of money is spent : three times as much 
 money is 'embezzled by officials of various ranks : 
 then the whole enterprise is abandoned. If, in- 
 stead of these ambitious projects, one quarter of 
 the labour were expended on the existing routes, 
 bridging and improving the worst parts, far more 
 good would be done ; but, then, officials could not 
 make so much money. 
 
 Two hours towards the east, along a hill-path 
 crossing a succession of water-courses which ran 
 down from a bald range of hills on our left, brought 
 us to Kadi-Musal, a village lying on the sloping 
 hillside about 3700 feet above sea-level, and com- 
 manding a very extensive view to the south. The 
 day had been chilly after the thunderstorm of 
 yesterday, and in the late afternoon showers of 
 rain fell : very unusual weather for this season. 
 
 VIII. This morning a ride of an hour and a half 
 brought us to Duwer (the Wall), from which my 
 quest was to start. In the summer of 1887, re- 
 turning towards Smyrna across the Banaz-Ova, I 
 got into conversation one day with a man who told 
 me that he belonged to Duwer, and that there was 
 a wonderful monument close to a small Turbe 
 (Mohammedan shrine), about an hour on the other 
 side of the village. I have always thought, and 
 believe to the present day, that there remain some 
 Phrygian monuments to be discovered in the country 
 
I. THE WAY OUT 7 1 
 
 that lies north and north-east from Duwer ; this 
 account seemed to confirm my view, and my special 
 object in this hurried run was to verify the report, 
 and discover the wonderful monument. At Duwer 
 we found a guide to the Turbe, left our packs in 
 quarters for the night, and went away in eager ex- 
 pectation. To my dismay the guide turned to the 
 south ; and after about an hour we reached the 
 Turbe, and found that it was close to the splendid 
 monument Arslan-Kaya (Lion Rock) which Sterrett 
 and I had found in 1883, and published in the 
 Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1884. At that time I 
 had not learned how important it is to notice such 
 signs of Mohammedan beliefs as a Turbe ; and had 
 passed by the small modern building with con- 
 tempt Now that I have learned better, I should 
 inquire the name of the Dede who is buried or sup- 
 posed to be buried there, and ask about the founda- 
 tion legend connected with it. But it was only in 
 1891 that I began to realise how the awe attaching 
 to old sites and old centres of religion or super- 
 stition has perpetuated itself among the Turks in 
 the form of the Dede, whose grave is shown as a 
 holy place, sometimes possessing miraculous powers. 
 Had I inquired in 1883 about the Dede and Turbe 
 near Arslan-Kaya, I should have been spared the 
 hurried excursion whose fortunes are here set forth ; 
 but also I should have missed the discovery of 
 
^2 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGlA 
 
 Julia Severn's inscription, and of the Jewish families 
 connected with her. 
 
 This was one of my greatest disappointments, 
 for the report had been so circumstantial and so 
 probable, that I had never doubted about some 
 great find ; and the man had been right in every 
 respect except one ; he had described the monu- 
 ment as north or north-east of the village, whereas 
 it lay to the south. The day, too, was cold and 
 showery : when the sun is bright, disappointments 
 are light, but I find them much harder to bear, 
 when I am cold and the sky is dark. 
 
 There was now no other course open than to 
 return to Duwer and try to get better news there. 
 But we could not hear of any other monument, 
 whether because the Duwerli knew of none, or 
 because I failed to make them talk. In my dejec- 
 tion I was not in the humour to get on well with 
 the usual crowd of natives, and in such circumstances 
 they were not likely to tell much. As the rain 
 came heavier, it did not seem advisable to pack up 
 and go on, so I contented myself with riding an 
 hour north over the watershed to make the con- 
 nection with a former route, and then came back to 
 bed feeling despondent. Rainy weather is peculiarly 
 depressing on these expeditions, for there is absolutely 
 nothing to do except work ; and when you are con- 
 fined inside a hut, archaeologising seems a cold and 
 hollow occupation. This was our first blank day. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA : II. THE WAY HOME. 
 
 IX. The distance to Afiom-Kara-Hissar (Opium- 
 Black-Castle) from Duwer is called ten hours ; but 
 with our faces turned to the south and towards 
 home we did it without feeling any temptation to 
 halt, for the same cold, bleak, showery weather 
 continued in a way I have never known here in 
 July. I knew every foot of the way and of the 
 country immediately around, while the unpropitious 
 weather did not tempt us to search for fresh woods 
 and pasture new. 
 
 Afiom-Kara-Hissar, with its citadel high on a 
 vast, almost inaccessible column of rock rising 
 straight out of the plain to a height of 700 feet, 1 was 
 a point of great importance in the long wars be- 
 tween Christian and Mohammedan. In 668, the 
 Arabs besieged Constantinople, only forty-six years 
 after Mohammed fled, helpless and almost alone, 
 from Mecca. But in 740, in front of the walls of 
 Akroenos, a Byzantine army won the first victory 
 over the Crescent, the victory that cheered on the 
 Romaic soldiers to the long wars of the following 
 
 1 800 Sir C. Wilson ; 626 Monsieur G. Radet. 
 
 (73) 
 
74 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 two centuries, in which step by step they rolled 
 back the tide of Mohammedanism, and extended 
 the Byzantine Empire further to the east than the 
 Roman Empire in its palmiest days. Akroenos is 
 the Turkish Afiom-Kara-Hissar. The great for- 
 tress, called also Nikopolis, the City of Victory, 
 inherited the people and the marbles of the old 
 Phrygian city, Prymnessos, three miles distant 
 south by east, through the centre of which our 
 journey lies to-morrow. 
 
 Afiom-Kara-Hissar is one of the rainiest places 
 that I know : perhaps the lofty mountains close on 
 the south catch the rain-clouds drifting south from 
 the Black Sea. But, whatever be the reason, it has 
 rained almost every time I have been at Kara- 
 Hissar ; I should except November, 1 88 1, when it 
 only snowed. The town was true to its character ; 
 and this afternoon had to be spent in a khan under 
 shelter. In another respect I had better luck. The 
 officials made no difficulties : generally I have had 
 to make two or three visits to the Konak at this 
 city, and go through a lot of trouble. 
 
 This was again a blank day. 
 
 X. Six hours through a country full of interest, 
 where I ought to have spent at least two long days, 
 brought us to Tchifut-Kassaba (Jews-Market), the 
 site of Synnada, which lies almost due south of 
 Kara-Hissar. The cold continued, but no rain fell. 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 75 
 
 The afternoon was spent looking for new inscrip- 
 tions; a few new things had turned up since my last 
 visit, but nothing of importance rewarded our efforts. 
 Synnada lies high, about 3700 feet, under the lofty 
 ridge of volcanic mountains that stretch south from 
 Kara-Hissar, at the west end of a fine fertile valley, 
 which stretches out before the city for seven or 
 eight miles (exactly as Strabo describes it). 
 
 Turkish towns are generally placed where a 
 copious supply of running water is available with 
 little trouble. In some large towns, the water 
 flows continuously through most of the streets ; and 
 in almost all there is abundance of fountains run- 
 ning constantly. The ancient cities, on the other 
 hand, were placed rather with a view either to con- 
 venience of trade or to military strength ; and, as 
 there was far greater engineering skill among the 
 ancients, they did not shrink from the task of con- 
 ducting an artificial water-supply to their cities 
 from a considerable distance. Tchifut-Kassaba 
 seems, however, to stand actually on part of the 
 site of Synnada ; and the acropolis of the ancient 
 city is at the edge of the modern. There are nu- 
 merous fountains, which pour an abundant supply 
 of water through the town. The water is brought 
 in underground channels from the hills near the 
 city on the west side. There are Greek workmen 
 in Turkey who still possess some considerable skill 
 
76 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 in making such underground channels for water. 
 I once saw one of these workmen engaged in ar- 
 ranging the water-supply for a village in Banaz-Ova : 
 he had nearly finished the work, but as it was still 
 incomplete I had the opportunity of seeing great 
 part of the aqueduct. It was apparently an old 
 channel, which had been broken ; and until the 
 repairs were completed the village had to carry all 
 its water from the break, about half a mile away, 
 while the new fountain in which the aqueduct was 
 to end, was as yet quite dry. 
 
 XL From Synnada to Tatarli, at the north-east 
 end of the long valley called in ancient times 
 Metropolitanus Campus, and now Turkmen-Ova or 
 Tchul-Ova, 1 is six hours due south by the horse 
 road over the hills, and eight hours by the araba 
 road. As we had traversed in 1881 the easy road 
 round the eastern end of the rough ridge, which, 
 stretching out from the lofty volcanic mountains 
 west of Synnada, separates the Synnada valley 
 from that of Metropolis, I determined this time to 
 take the horse road. 
 
 Our road led through or near a series of villages, 
 almost all of which contain numerous traces of 
 ancient life. Most of these villages I had visited 
 in October, 1881 ; and on this occasion I did not 
 find any new inscription, till we entered a glen that 
 
 1 The shape of the valley suggested the name tchul (sack). 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 77 
 
 ascended towards the south, where a stone in a 
 fountain bore an interesting epigram. About six 
 miles south of Synnada we reached a village 
 Baghche-Hissar (Garden-Castle, incorrectly in maps 
 Baljik-Hissar), near the top of the glen. Here the 
 villagers told us that a conical hill above the village 
 on the east contained many traces of Djineviz (old 
 walls), but that there were no inscribed stones there. 
 Then a villager told us that he knew of a stone 
 among the hills with letters on it ; but it was not 
 marble, only " black stone ". He said it was two 
 hours distant, close to our road ; and I induced 
 him to come and show it, by promising him a good 
 reward, if it bore an inscription ; but payment was 
 to be strictly by results ; no letters, no money. I 
 was eager to get this inscription, as from his de- 
 scription, it seemed likely to be a boundary stone, 
 and therefore perhaps of the highest importance 
 and rarity. As these Turkish villagers are fickle 
 and changeable, it is always advisable to go with 
 them the moment they show any willingness : if 
 you postpone for even a short time after they have 
 been brought to the scratch, you are liable to find 
 that their habitual sluggishness has resumed its 
 sway, and it is doubly difficult, sometimes impossible, 
 to get them started again. 
 
 We therefore sacrificed the Djineviz of the hill- 
 city. It is remarkable how the name Genoese is 
 
78 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 applied to all ancient massive walls in Turkey; but 
 this is perhaps due to the apparent connection with 
 the Arabic Djin, the winged evil spirits, the gem't 
 of old-fashioned editions of the Arabian Nights and 
 of Tales of the Genii. This name has caused some 
 difficulty to travellers, who imagine that the Genoese 
 must have been present wherever they find Djineviz. 
 Hamilton refers to this idea in regard to the line of 
 splendid khans from Trebizond to Tabriz : 1 "an 
 opinion has gone abroad that they were erected by 
 the Genoese when they possessed the trade of this 
 country. To the Genoese are ascribed, also, the 
 castles of Trebizond, Baiburt," etc. He proceeds to 
 show that all these buildings are earlier in date than 
 any Genoese settlements in Asia Minor. 
 
 Our road out of the village wound round the 
 back of the Djineviz hill, and the fact was immedi- 
 ately plain that it had been cut out of the hillside 
 with great care and skill. It led, with a steady, 
 gradual ascent, round the south side of the hill, but 
 was not intended as the access to a city on the top, 
 for on the south-east side it turned away to the 
 south, and wound in the same long curves and 
 steady ascent up the pass towards Metropolis. It 
 was obviously a Roman road leading southwards, 
 for never has any race except the Romans ruled 
 this country who undertook engineering works like 
 
 1 Researches in Asia Minor, i., p. 185. 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 79 
 
 that ; and it is the finest specimen of Roman road- 
 engineering that I have seen in Asia Minor. Hither- 
 to I had believed, and stated in print more than 
 once as indubitable, that the Roman road from 
 Synnada to Metropolis must have followed the 
 longer line of the easy araba road, above de- 
 scribed ; but here was an obvious Roman road 
 far up the pass, pointing towards Metropolis. 
 About a mile or two on, our guide said the stone 
 lay up the hillside to the west. I was eager to 
 follow the Roman road as far as possible, and see 
 whether it actually reached the summit of the 
 pass ; but, as there was good hope of returning 
 again to the line of the road, which could be 
 seen for some distance in front, I very unwillingly 
 followed the Turk away to the right. He led us 
 up among the hills higher and higher, further and 
 further from the road, declaring always that the 
 stone was quite close. At last near the highest 
 part of the ridge, he declared that the stone was 
 here, and, after hunting about for a minute, pointed 
 out a rock on which were some natural marks, 
 and claimed his reward. It was too aggravating ! 
 the Roman road was now hopelessly lost ; the 
 clouds had come down and rain was falling ; every- 
 thing seemed to be against us. It was clear that 
 the man either had forgotten the exact spot where 
 the inscribed stone was, or had got tired of the 
 
80 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 quest and wanted to get away home, for his de- 
 scription in no way corresponded to what he now 
 showed us. I refused to pay him until he showed 
 the lettered stone ; and quoted the terms of the 
 bargain. He argued that he had promised to 
 show me a kara-tash, not a mermer ; and this was 
 a kara-tash. We all tried to show him that this 
 argument was a fallacy ; but he refused to be 
 convinced ; and his obstinate reiteration of this 
 bad reasoning was not calculated to soothe our 
 wounded feelings. I ordered him off, unless he 
 showed us the " written stone"; and I shall never 
 forget the look of misery that came over his face, 
 as he realised that he was to get nothing. It has 
 often haunted me since, by day and by night. 
 I don't know how I was so stony hearted as to 
 turn the poor fellow away, to walk back more than 
 an hour in the rain without a penny ; but at the 
 moment I could not bear the loss of both the 
 Djineviz and the Roman road. I still see the look 
 that he cast back on me, as he turned slowly away, 
 a ragged, bent, poverty-stricken old man of fifty, 
 with his feet wrapt in old clouts in place of shoes, 
 shuffling along in the regular Turkish style, having 
 fallen from his golden dream to the hard reality of 
 penury. A shilling to him would have made him 
 contented and even rich : to me it was nothing ; 
 and yet I let him go away empty. It was an act 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 8t 
 
 for which there can be no justification, no pallia- 
 tion. The letter of the bargain was on my side ; 
 but the feeling that ought to rule in the conduct of 
 man to man condemns me absolutely. It is a 
 small incident in itself; but yet I doubt if any- 
 thing in my whole life has cost me so much re- 
 morse. It was a typical example of the essential 
 immorality of rigorous legal right when exercised 
 by unsympathetic power. 
 
 We were in no pleasant situation ourselves ; a 
 slight mist, accompanied by fine rain, contracted 
 the view on all sides ; a sea of hills surrounded us ; 
 it was near an hour since we had seen anything like 
 a path, and for the last half-hour we had been on 
 foot, as the ground was too rough to ride. In such 
 circumstances, one appreciates the value of a com- 
 pass. After we had dragged our horses behind us 
 for half an hour in the proper direction, the mist 
 lifted a little, and we saw far away in front the hills 
 dipping into the valley of Metropolis. There we 
 spent the evening without further misadventure and 
 without any new discovery. 
 
 Three years later, in 1891, when Mrs. Ramsay 
 and I crossed the higher mountains on the west, and 
 were coming down from the north-west side into the 
 valley of Metropolis, we heard of an inscription on 
 a hard-task^ beside the road from Metropolis to 
 Synnada. This time we were more lucky. We 
 
82 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 found a boundary stone, letters roughly scratched on 
 a rock at the orders of an official, whose name also 
 occurs on two blocks of Synnadic marble which were 
 found in Rome : thus the three documents complete 
 each other, and prove that, in the reign of Trajan, 
 an imperial procurator at Synnada regulated the 
 boundaries between various tribes and cities of the 
 district, besides having the specifications inscribed 
 on blocks of marble for Rome under his responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 It then became obvious that our guide in 1888 
 was seeking either for that boundary stone or for 
 another of the same series. Now the stone which 
 we found was full three hours distant from Baghche- 
 Hissar, whereas the guide turned away from the 
 road a bare hour from the village. Moreover the 
 guide expected to find his stone a long way from 
 the road among the hills, whereas the inscription 
 which we found was only about fifty yards from the 
 road on the brow of a bare slope leading down to 
 the valley of Metropolis. The guide, therefore, 
 must have been looking for a different boundary 
 stone from that which we found ; and the conclusion 
 is that it remains for some more fortunate or more 
 skilful traveller than I to find the reported inscrip- 
 tion and probably to clear up the obscurities which 
 still envelop the topography of that district. He is 
 most likely to succeed, if he goes to the village 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 83 
 
 Alaka on the hills south of Baghche-Hissar, and 
 contrives to find a guide there. 1 
 
 XII. We crossed a steep and lofty mountain- 
 ridge due south into the valley of Apollonia and 
 Sozopolis (City of the Saviour), as the Christians 
 called the Byzantine city on a lofty rock, which 
 took the place of Apollonia when its situation in 
 the open plain was found to be too unsafe. The 
 day was spent in making a round of villages, veri- 
 fying the text of published inscriptions, and, though 
 tedious, it was profitable. In this southern valley 
 we were plunged into the usual blazing heat of 
 July ; and the sudden change from the cold and 
 rain of the past week was trying. At night I 
 lay outside the stuffy Oda, with the horses too 
 near ; and the bad smell produced illness, as I have 
 often experienced before. 
 
 XIII. Though hardly able to get on rny horse, 
 and frequently compelled to get off, I struggled on 
 for an hour to Olu-Borlu, on the site of Sozopolis. 
 After resting for an hour or two I went out in search 
 of an important inscription, the published copy of 
 which was unsatisfactory. According to my in- 
 formation it was in the courtyard of a Jwdjire, but 
 when I asked for the kodjire, every one said that any 
 place where a hodja lived was a hodjire. Taking 
 a guide, I went about from place to place. Olu- 
 
 1 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, ch. xviii., and inscr. No. 693. 
 
84 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 Borlu occupies two hills, with a valley between, 
 and I was sent back and forward from one hill to 
 the other, as each person who was consulted made 
 some new suggestion. A growing crowd accom- 
 panied, until at last the whole male population of 
 the town was perambulating from hill to hill and 
 back again. I was still very ill, and was frequently 
 obliged to halt, whereupon the whole crowd squatted 
 or lounged about until I recovered, and was able to 
 go on. In this way we trudged on, hour after hour, 
 buoyed up by ever-renewed hopes, as somebody 
 remembered some house that we had not seen which 
 might correspond to the description, but always 
 disappointed. One or two interesting things turned 
 up, and at last sunset released me from torture. I 
 had done my duty by that stone, and failed. 
 
 XIV. Seven hours to Apameia-Kelainai, now 
 one of the termini of the Ottoman Railway, but in 
 1888 an insignificant village. At four hours from 
 Olu-Borlu, we came to a stone, of which I was in 
 search. I saw it in 1882, and read the name of 
 the Emperor Hadrian at the beginning ; but as it 
 was lying in a bad position I could not see the 
 rest. I hoped now to find some means of moving 
 the stone. Originally, the inscribed stone formed 
 part of a monument, a great, tall, square pillar 
 standing on a circular basis ; but the parts were 
 now scattered, though apparently none were lost. 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 85 
 
 A man was sent on to the nearest village to hire 
 workmen and bring a beam to use as a lever, and 
 I sat down to wait. A few minutes after a train of 
 men driving donkeys came along. They stopped 
 in the usual way to talk. It is always easy to 
 interest men in a practical matter like this, and the 
 offer of a quarter dollar apiece made them eager to 
 help. The stone was soon turned, revealing a dedi- 
 cation to the Boundary Gods of Apollonia, under 
 Hadrian, A.D. 137. Then the messenger came up 
 with half a dozen helpers ; and though there was 
 no work for them, I paid them their hire, to their 
 intense astonishment To us that seems mere 
 justice, to them it seemed mere folly. There was 
 no limit to the madness of these Ingleez. Turks 
 and Europeans can never judge alike. In their 
 estimation the essential point was, why should two 
 sets of men be paid for one piece of work ? That 
 they had been brought a mile uphill was nothing 
 to them after they had done it though much 
 when you are trying to induce them to do it. If 
 I had had my wits about me I should have ex- 
 plained the situation to them from the Oriental 
 point of view : work had been promised them, and 
 pay for it, but God had willed that the work should 
 be done and the money earned by others, to whom 
 he had granted it. Then, out of pure and unde- 
 served liberality, I should have given them the 
 
86 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 money as a gift. In this way they would have re- 
 spected the action and the doer. It is not so much 
 what you do, as the way you do it, that helps you 
 to be on friendly terms with the Turks. They like 
 far better to get money for nothing than to earn it ; 
 to earn it is a degradation, and the paymaster a 
 tyrant. Put it in the light of a gift, and regard 
 their service as a kindness, or a bit of hospitality 
 to a stranger : they love the gift, and admire the 
 generous giver. On the other hand, your Scotsman 
 hates to get money, unless he has earned it fairly ; 
 the best of them won't take it, the worst of them 
 take it and hate the giver. 
 
 At Apameia, the belief that the Ottoman Rail- 
 way was coming soon had roused the spirit of 
 activity and speculation. A number of Greeks had 
 already settled there. Two khans had been built. 
 Every one was eager to find out where the station 
 would be placed, hoping to be first to buy land 
 which would rise in value after the railway was made. 
 As I was understood to know everything, many 
 crafty schemes were put in operation to worm out 
 of me the secrets of the railway plan ; but it was 
 easy to conceal my knowledge, and gain credit for 
 a deep one who could keep his own counsel, 
 for, of course, I knew no more than they did. 
 Others wanted to be recommended to my good 
 friend, Mr. Walker, Chief Engineer of the O. R., 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 87 
 
 and were so insistent and persistent as to become a 
 serious nuisance. None ventured to ask a recom- 
 mendation to the General Manager, Mr. Purser; he 
 was understood to be a great and distant god, re- 
 moved beyond the ken of mere men, and not to be 
 lightly thought of. 
 
 Having been at Apameia about seventeen days 
 previously with my wife, I had no prospect of 
 rinding anything fresh, and made an early start next 
 morning. The distance to the railway terminus at 
 Serai-Keui was called twenty- four hours, and I 
 wanted to do it in two days. But with tired animals 
 that was not an easy matter, and could only be 
 achieved by steady plodding through two very long 
 days. Hence, I did not devote several days to the 
 proper exploration and study of the topography of 
 Apameia as I ought to have done, since there was 
 plenty of time before the next French steamer 
 should start. I was still under the impression that 
 the careful survey of a distinguished German pro- 
 fessor, and the theory which he had founded on it, 
 had exhausted the subject ; and it was not until the 
 vigorous sense of my friend the " Wandering 
 Scholar" revolted at the central point in that theory, 
 that I began to examine and test for myself. 
 There was so much to do in Asia Minor that I at 
 first grudged the time needed for districts that were 
 readily accessible or had been already explored by 
 
88 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 others, thinking it better to accept their results, and 
 to go on to the least known districts ; hence it has 
 come about that the Lycos valley, through which I 
 have gone fourteen times, is less known to me than 
 most of the inner parts of Phrygia, and, so far as I 
 may judge, the chapters of my Cities and Bishoprics 
 that describe the Lycos valley are the least satis- 
 factory and the least complete. Many of my critics 
 bring against me the opposite charge, that I have de- 
 spised and rejected the work of my predecessors in 
 recent times ; but the truth is that the lesson which 
 cost me most time to learn was to test all theories, 
 and not accept any until I had proved them on 
 the spot ; and my worst mistakes have been founded 
 on theories accepted by the world in the dearth 
 of evidence, and followed with blind faith by me. 
 And the advice that I would impress on my 
 successors in exploration is to accept nothing 
 that I have said until they have tried it for them- 
 selves, to verify every inscription with critical eye 
 on the outlook for faults, to test every statement 
 and every description on the spot, but in doing 
 so to be careful that they themselves are accurate. 
 Only by long experience and many errors do you 
 realise how hard it is to be accurate. In strange 
 surroundings, and with eyes unused to observe 
 this class of facts (as all young travellers are), often 
 in fatigue, almost in exhaustion, and in the nervous 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 89 
 
 excitement produced by over-fatigue, in hurry and 
 anxiety not to spend time unnecessarily, with the 
 glowing sun gilding everything with its glamour 
 and exercising on yourself its subtle but enervating 
 charm, with food sufficient indeed for health but 
 not sufficient to maintain that high standard of 
 nervous energy that is required for your best 
 work, you can hardly (and only unwillingly) re- 
 cognise how error creeps in. You will look at a 
 thing and see it wrong ; you may have the correct 
 description before you, compare it with the original, 
 and if you don't go over it a dozen times and look 
 at it from all sides and in varieties of light, you 
 may see wrong and pervert the facts. All these 
 errors I have made myself, and seen others 
 make. I have sometimes annoyed my coadjutors 
 by insisting on verifying for myself their results, 
 and been met by the accusation that I seemed to 
 think their work of no account ; but I know that 
 if they travelled for half a dozen years, they would 
 realise that I should have done better to be even 
 more critical than I was. My own good fortune 
 has lain in the fact that so many journeys and 
 repetition of visits have enabled me to correct my 
 own errors, and approximate to the truth as the 
 mean of many varying observations. 
 
 Apameia is one of the most interesting places in 
 the ancient world, and is likely to become a resort 
 
90 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 of tourists. It can be visited with ease and with per- 
 fect comfort, thanks to the Ottoman Railway. But I 
 dare not begin here to describe it, or to tell how 
 you can see and hear its Laughing and its Weeping 
 Fountain, and visit the many other remarkable Foun- 
 tains of the Marsyas, the Maeander, the Orgas, 
 and the Therma ; you can see where the goddess 
 Athena sat on the hill behind the city, and looking 
 down descried in the lake the mirrored distortion of 
 her face as she played on her newly invented flute ; 
 you may perhaps identify the rock from behind 
 which Marsyas peeped and saw her throw away the 
 flute in disgust ; you can certainly see the place 
 where he, on the accursed flute, tried to vie with 
 Apollo and his lyre, simple Phrygian matched 
 against civilised Greek; and you can sit under a 
 lineal descendant of the tree on which he was hung 
 up to be flayed by the hard-hearted victor in that 
 musical agon, and muse over the repetition of that 
 contest now going on around you, in which the 
 simple Mohammedan Phrygian is being vanquished 
 by the energetic, hard-working Greek settlers, and 
 accepts his defeat as "the will of Allah". But I 
 have elsewhere done what I can to set in its true 
 light and varied interest the long tale of Apameia- 
 Kelainai ; l and now we must hurry away to the 
 ^Egean coast and the voyage home. 
 
 1 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, chs. xi., xii. 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 91 
 
 XV. To-day we rode down the "Great Eastern 
 Highway " connecting the ^Egean harbours with the 
 eastern lands. During the first five hours there 
 stretched on our left a country, partly hilly and 
 partly plain, which has all the appearance of being 
 able to support a large population, containing fully 
 a dozen villages at the present day ; and yet I do 
 not know that any traveller has ever gone through 
 it. It lies near, yet off the line of, the Great High- 
 way ; and one would expect that it was formerly 
 inhabited by a rather primitive people, like those of 
 Tchal district. Then we went along the northern 
 edge of the long salt lake Anava, where people still 
 gather salt, as they did when the vast army of 
 Xerxes marched by the same way. At ten hours 
 we passed under the village Tchardak ; three weeks 
 before my wife and I spent here the first night from 
 Apameia ; but this time I plodded on two hours 
 more to Bash-Tcheshme (Head-Fountain). 
 
 Bash-Tcheshme stands at the top of the pass 
 that slopes down to the head of the Lycos valley. 
 No stream runs down the pass (except while rain 
 is falling), which in Byzantine times seems to have 
 been called Graos Gala, Old-Woman's Milk, by 
 coarse rustic wit. There is no village beside the 
 fountain ; but merely a large shed, at which 
 muleteers and drovers rest and purchase cups of 
 coffee from the Turk who attends to the shed. 
 
92 AN EXCURSION IN PHRYGIA 
 
 The only other products are dirt and fleas ; but 
 these are luxuriant. The ground is alive with fleas ; 
 I have seen places that were pretty bad, but nothing 
 to surpass Bash-Tcheshme. 
 
 This was, therefore, an excellent plan to test my 
 recent discovery that waterproof keeps off vermin. 
 I drew up my socks over my trousers, spread a 
 waterproof sheet over the filthy mattress which the 
 Turk gave me, put on my greatcoat, and over that 
 a waterproof cloak ; and lay down to rest quietly, 
 undisturbed and victorious, till morning ; while 
 the armies of the enemy gathered round the sea of 
 waterproof, and dared not cross. The whole place 
 was so indescribably filthy that I could not un- 
 fasten my own blankets. 
 
 XVI. Twelve hours to Serai-Keui, through the 
 high glen of Colossai at the end of the upper glen 
 of the Lycos, then down a long step to the lower 
 Lycos valley. At the eighth hour we passed the 
 place where, three weeks ago, my wife and I were 
 belated on the second night from Apameia and lay 
 out for the night in a field ; in the' early morning, 
 a shower coming on, we had to rise and take the 
 road ; and we rode into Serai-Keui, four hours 
 distant, as the people were going to the station to 
 take the early train starting at 7 A.M. Among 
 them were some friends who had come up for a 
 day from Smyrna with whom we acquired great 
 
II. THE WAY HOME 93 
 
 but not wholly deserved credit for activity. This 
 time my horse was pretty well exhausted, and 
 his rider was not very fresh ; but with the prospect 
 of a good meal and a comfortable bed at Serai-Keui, 
 we struggled on. There I paid off my men, and 
 took the early train next morning for Smyrna, 
 having done a hard sixteen days' work, and sus- 
 tained some great disappointments, but consoled 
 for all by the Jewish inscription. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES OF ASIA MINOR. 
 
 ONE of the facts that are most striking to the 
 traveller in Asia Minor is the interlacing and 
 alternation of separate and unblending races. In 
 half a dozen villages which you visit in the course 
 of a day you may find four or five separate peoples, 
 differing in manners, dress, language, and even re- 
 ligion, each living in its own village, and never inter- 
 marrying with, rarely even entering, the alien village 
 a mile or two distant. The broad distinction of 
 Christian and Moslem is wholly insufficient and 
 even misleading. The Turkish peasants entertain 
 a stronger hatred towards the Circassian, rigid and 
 pious Moslem as he is, than towards the Greek or 
 Armenian Christian, while they regard the Kizil- 
 Bash or heterodox Turkmens with a mingled 
 loathing and contempt, surpassing their worst 
 scorn for the Christian. You often meet a Greek 
 in a Turkish village, sitting in the Oda, apparently 
 in quite friendly conversation with the people ; but 
 you will hardly ever see a Turk in a Circassian 
 village, and rarely a Circassian in a Turkish village, 
 (94) 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES OF ASIA MINOR 95 
 
 or, if you do, he glares about, feeling himself an 
 enemy among enemies. 
 
 The same feature was noted by ancient observers 
 in Asia Minor. Strabo speaks of the great variety 
 of distinct races in Cappadocia about the Christian 
 era, which implies that the same cause acted then 
 as now, viz., the races did not mix by intercourse 
 and intermarriage. The tendency of Roman rule 
 was to obliterate racial differences, and encourage 
 homogeneousness ; and the same result was even 
 more strongly fostered by the influence of the 
 Church. Hence, in the fourth century, the great 
 Cappadocian fathers, Basil and the Gregories, 
 speak of the Cappadocians as if they were a single 
 homogeneous race, different from and superior to 
 the Galatians. 
 
 But since the Seljuk Turks entered Asia Minor 
 in 1070, the conciliation of racial differences has 
 ceased (except that those Christians, who accepted 
 Mohammedanism, amalgamated with the immi- 
 grant Turks, as we shall see). All the different 
 races that have swept over the unhappy land have 
 left representatives in the existing population ; 
 and all the different strains of blood remain un- 
 mixed. 
 
 I. TURKS. Even those who call themselves 
 Osmanli, or Ottoman Turks, and consider themselves 
 homogeneous in race, present considerable varieties. 
 
96 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 The Osmanli of the cities are very different in 
 character from those of the villages, and those 
 of one district vary widely from those of another. 
 The Osmanli are almost the only example of real 
 racial mixture under the Turkish regime. There 
 can be no doubt that a considerable part of the 
 Christian population of central Anatolia turned 
 Moslem during the first two or three centuries of 
 Turkish rule, and the Mohammedanised Christian 
 population has melted into, or perhaps has ab- 
 sorbed into itself, the settled and more adaptable 
 part of the Turkish population. In Phrygia and 
 Pisidia, the Christian population disappeared al- 
 most entirely ; and the whole country became 
 Mohammedan except a few small Christian 
 settlements, e.g., Zille beside Konia, Permenda 
 beside Ak Sheher, Khonas near Denizli, quarters 
 in the cities Sparta and Olu-Borlu, with one or two 
 others. We see that the purely Christian city 
 Laodiceia (pronounced Ladfkya), in A.D. 1210, had 
 become the mainly Mohammedan city Ladik in 
 1332, and in 1340 had even lost its old name and 
 taken the purely Turkish name Thingozlou (Denizli, 
 " full of waters " ) ; and yet some of the old 
 Anatolian institutions, such as "the Brotherhood," 
 (see chapter xi.) remained in a Mohammedanised 
 form. Further we find no reason to think that any 
 violent change had occurred in the interval, for the 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 97 
 
 Seljuk Sultans carried out no policy of extermina- 
 tion, but treated the Christian subjects so well that 
 many of them fought valiantly against the oppres- 
 sive Byzantine emperors. In view of facts like 
 these, we must conclude that the population of 
 cities like Ladik and Kutaya (Kotiaion) became 
 Mohammedan in the mass, and that any Christian 
 remnant dwindled or emigrated. 1 
 
 The change was due, probably, to two reasons. 
 In the first place, though no direct persecution of 
 Christians was practised by the Turks, yet the posi- 
 tion of inferiority aud degradation, to which the 
 Christians were reduced, was such that a strong 
 temptation existed to seek the easy, ever open 
 entrance to honour and privilege. This alone, 
 however, would have been insufficient without the 
 second cause, which was that Phrygia had always 
 been a hot-bed of heresy, and that all heretics were 
 exposed to very harsh treatment at the hands of 
 the Byzantine government. Many of these heresies 
 were coloured by Oriental ideas ; and a strong Orien- 
 tal substratum existed in the population. Hence 
 they were prone to relapse into a religion of the 
 thoroughly Oriental type like Mohammedanism. 
 On the other hand Cappadocia, where the Orthodox 
 Church had been far more completely victorious, 
 has a very much larger Christian population. 
 
 1 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., p. 25 ff. 
 
 7 
 
98 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 That the change of religion took place in Phrygia 
 and Pisidia, not at the movement of the Turkish 
 conquest, but by gradual steps in the following 
 period, is shown by the fact that we can often trace 
 the existence of a Christian and a Mohammedan 
 town side by side in a district which is now purely 
 Mohammedan. So, for example, at five miles' dis- 
 tance from each other we find the Seljuk town 
 Karamanli, " the men of Karaman " (a noted chief), 
 and the Christian Tefeni, the town of Saint Stephen, 
 and at one mile from each other Seljiikler (the 
 Seljuks) and Sivasli (the men of the Christian 
 Sebaste). At the present day all are alike Moslem 
 and Osmanli, and have been so for centuries ; but 
 the names arose when the old Christians and the 
 new Turks lived side by side, yet distinct, in the 
 same valley. 
 
 From this point of view, every valley in Phrygia 
 is a study in ethnology and in religious history, 
 where names are the chief evidence of the changes 
 which the historian tries to trace. Little has yet 
 been done in this direction, for the view which has 
 just been stated did not ripen in my mind till my 
 travelling had ended, for a time at least ; and the 
 generalisations, which are embodied and discussed 
 in my book on the Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, 
 grew in my mind during subsequent study. You 
 can often trace, within one district, a Christian town 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 99 
 
 moslemised, a Turkish town, and Turkmen, Cir- 
 cassian and recent refugee villages ; and all are 
 recognisable by the names without entering them, 
 while the first two can be distinguished only by the 
 names. 1 
 
 The Turkish part of the population, then, is very 
 various in origin, Phrygian, Galatian, etc., mixed 
 with true Turkish blood ; but this whole class 
 regards itself as homogeneous, and its members 
 mix freely. 
 
 After the Osmanli chiefs ousted the Seljuk 
 Sultans, and reigned in their stead over a far vaster 
 empire, the whole Turkish population began to 
 style itself Osmanli ; and at the present day the 
 name "Turk" is rarely used, and I have heard it 
 employed only in two ways, either as a distinguish- 
 ing term of race (for example, you ask whether a 
 village is "Turk" or "Turkmen"), and as a term 
 of contempt (for example, you mutter " Turk Kafa," 
 where in English you would say " Blockhead "). 
 
 The contempt felt and expressed by Mohamme- 
 dans of other races in the country for the Turks is 
 a remarkable feature of which I have seen numerous 
 examples. That excellent authority, " A Consul's 
 Daughter and Wife," 2 mentions a similar fact in 
 Macedonia : " The Mohammedan Albanians deeply 
 
 1 Many other examples are quoted loc. cit., pp. 27, 303, 576, 581. 
 
 2 The People of Turkey, i., p. 87. 
 
100 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 resent the forfeiture of their liberty and the loss 
 of their privileges. . . . The Albanian regards 
 the Turk as a doubtful friend, and a corrupt and 
 impotent master." Similarly, Circassians have 
 said to me : " We fear the Russians much : we fear 
 the English more : but we despise the Turks ". 
 
 II. TURKMEN. The Turkmen tribes are widely 
 scattered through Anatolia. Already in the 
 beginning of the thirteenth century, the historian 
 Anna Comnena distinguishes correctly between 
 Turks and Turkmens. The Turkmens are all 
 nomadic, while the Turks lead a settled life. Yet 
 it is certain that Turkmen villages occasionally put 
 off the nomadic habit and adopt a settled life ; but 
 in that case, they tend to forget the name Turkmen, 
 and to rank themselves as Turk and Osmanli. In 
 the large valley of Metropolis (Tchul-Ova or Turk- 
 men-Ova), I was told in 1883 that there was one 
 Turk village, and all the rest were Turkmen. Now, 
 most of them claim to be Turk : in one village, 
 where we were very hospitably entertained in 1891, 
 the magnate, who was by birth merely the Turk- 
 men chief, admitted with some reluctance and 
 shamefacedness, that the village had originally 
 been Turkmen : doubtless his successor will believe 
 that he is pure Osmanli. 
 
 This process, as I believe, has been going on for 
 centuries, but it has been greatly quickened in 
 
OF ASIA MINOR IOI 
 
 recent years both by the policy of the government 
 (which tries to discourage and even forcibly to stop 
 nomadism), and by the marked growth of the Euro- 
 pean spirit in this Oriental land. 1 The question is, 
 has it not been always going on ? Is the original 
 Turk (as distinguished from the Mohammedanised 
 Phrygian or Galatian) anything more than a Turk- 
 men after two or three generations of settled life ? 
 I put this question to Sir Henry Howorth and 
 other authorities on a subject in which I am only 
 an inquirer. 
 
 An intermediate stage between the nomadic 
 habit of Turkmens and the settled habit of Turks is 
 found in many villages and even towns, whose in- 
 habitants, having in most respects the appearance 
 of settled living, go partially out into summer 
 quarters (Yaila). This custom of going to Yaila 
 varies from the mild form, in which it is hardly more 
 than a hygienic precaution (like the month or two 
 in the country which is an institution among our 
 own urban population), to the thorough-going style 
 in which it is barely distinguishable from the no- 
 madic habit ; and the semi-nomadic habit exists in 
 practically the same form among some Turkmens 
 and some Turks who have long rejected the name 
 Turkmen. Such facts point to an old-standing 
 process whereby Turkmen becomes Turk in fact 
 and in feeling. 
 
 1 See chapter vi. 
 
IO2 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 These nomad Turkmen tribes are worthy the 
 historian's attention. It was they, and not the 
 Turkish armies, not even the terrible raids by 
 which the Turks harried Byzantine territory, that 
 destroyed the Roman civilisation and prosperity 
 and population in Asia Minor. The Arabs raided 
 all Asia Minor in as terrible a way for centuries, 
 and were for long lords undisturbed of some parts 
 of the country ; yet their conquest was ephemeral, 
 and left no visible trace behind it. They won 
 many battles, they destroyed cities, they lopped 
 off territories from the Empire of the Caesars, but 
 the fabric of Christian society was not affected by 
 them. That great organisation, the result of 
 Roman law and Christian teaching and ecclesi- 
 astical unity, defied all such assaults, and, like 
 the hydra in the fable, it put forth a new head 
 where one was lopped off ; its flesh closed up and 
 healed as soon as the sword had passed through 
 it. 
 
 In like manner the fabric of Roman Christian 
 society would, in all probability, have defied and 
 outlasted the open attack of the Turks. After 
 the first fury of their inroad was spent in the end 
 of the eleventh century, it is obvious that the 
 Byzantine armies were stronger than the Turkish, 
 wherever they got a fair chance in the commanders 
 who were put over them. Yet in spite of many 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 103 
 
 defeats in detail, the Turkish power grew steadily 
 stronger. The nomad Turkmens spread over the 
 face of the land ; the soil passed out of cultivation ; 
 the population decreased ; the Christian cities were 
 isolated from each other by a sea of nomad wan- 
 dering tribes ; intercourse, and consequently trades 
 and manufactures, were to a great extent destroyed ; 
 and gradually the Christians in most places ac- 
 quiesced, as we have seen, in the Oriental spirit 
 and the Oriental religion of the dominant race. 
 It is a remarkable instance of degeneration from 
 civilised to barbarian society, and one which it 
 would be instructive to study in detail ; but the 
 general fact is summed up in the phrase, the 
 nomadisation of Asia Minor. 1 
 
 Turkmens are almost always exceedingly hospit- 
 able. In 1883, at lunch in a Turkmen tent a dozen 
 miles south of Dorylaion, there was one man who 
 struck me as being very Irish in appearance, and 
 who was unusually pressing in his hospitality, in- 
 viting us most urgently to stay a night. I said to 
 the friend who was with me that I had never met 
 such cordial kindliness in all my experience, and 
 remarked on the man's Irish look. As it was only 
 midday, and there was no opening for work in the 
 neighbourhood, we had to decline the invitation. 
 
 1 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., pp. 16 f., 27 ff., 299 ff., 
 etc. 
 
104 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 At night, while we were sitting at dinner, my friend 
 said : " Would you be surprised to learn that that 
 Turkmen whom you thought so like an Irishman 
 speaks English as well as you or I do?" It turned 
 out that, when we left, the man came out with us. 
 I was in front, and he walked alongside of my 
 friend's horse. After coming some little distance 
 out of the camp, when there was no one near, he 
 said, " You couldn't oblige me with a bit of to- 
 bacco, could you, sir ? " My friend gave him all 
 that he had ; but did not ask him who he was, or 
 how he came to be there. I was exceedingly 
 vexed that we had not stopped at the encamp- 
 ment : we might have had an interesting conversa- 
 tion with that Irish Turkmen. It was obvious that 
 he had come so far out of the camp in order to 
 talk, and had selected my friend as having a speci- 
 ally pleasant manner with natives : but the latter 
 was so taken aback as to let the opportunity slip. 
 I have often wished to go back to that camp. 
 
 A Turkmen Bey, who entertained us royally in 
 1882, gave us also an interesting account of his 
 pilgrimage to Mecca. 1 He went twelve days' jour- 
 ney through the Cilician Gates to Messina, where he 
 found an English ship to take him to Port Said, 
 thence through the Canal and down the Red Sea 
 to Jeddah, the port for Mecca. There the Dellil 
 
 1 1 depended then on an interpreter. 
 
OF ASIA MINOR IO5 
 
 of his district met him, took charge of him, brought 
 him to a khan in Mecca and looked after him during 
 his stay. His journey occupied rather more than 
 four months and cost altogether T. 63 (about 
 ^57 stg-)- In answer to a question, he explained 
 that the Dellils were men who came from Mecca 
 every second year collecting gifts for the holy 
 shrine. Each of these had his special district, and 
 wrote down the names of those in his district who 
 intended to go on pilgrimage during the next two 
 years, and each pilgrim when he came to Mecca 
 inquired for his Dellil. He also said that the 
 pilgrims paid nothing to the Dellil while they were 
 in Mecca, but they were expected to send gifts 
 afterwards, of which the Dellil received a portion. 
 
 Many of the Turkmen are Kizil-Bash (Red- 
 Heads), i.e., unorthodox Moslems : not merely is 
 that the case with the nomads, but in many cases 
 settled villages, where no trace of the nomadic 
 habit remains, are Kizil-Bash, and loathed by the 
 orthodox Turks. 
 
 III. YURUK. The Yuruks are nomads, who are 
 found in many parts of Asia Minor, but almost 
 always, so far as my experience goes, in moun- 
 tainous districts, whereas the Turkmen tribes usually 
 live more in the great plains. According to Von 
 Luschan, the Yuruks of Lycia are an immigrant 
 race, akin to the Gypsies : his earlier view had 
 
IO6 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 been that they were Mongolian, but, in his final 
 work on Lycia, he abandons his original opinion. 
 I cannot pretend to hold any ethnological view ; 
 but, while his later opinion seems in some respects 
 startling and at first sight improbable, it has the 
 merit of explaining the difference of haunts between 
 Yuruk and Turkmen. Moreover, it is certain that 
 there is a decidedly greater difference in character 
 between Yuruk and Turkmen than there is between 
 Turkmen and Turk. 1 
 
 Differing from Dr. Humann, who declared that 
 the Yuruks have no religion at all, Von Luschan 
 maintains that they are good Mussulmans, regular 
 in the five daily prayers, and in many cases going 
 on pilgrimage to Mecca. My own experience is 
 intermediate ; they do indeed claim to be Moham- 
 medans, and practise circumcision, but I never saw 
 a Yuruk praying in his own home, though, when 
 they come into the settled villages, they put on all 
 the appearance of good Moslems. 2 It is, however, 
 possible, as Von Luschan remarks, that the Lycian 
 Yuruks may differ in character from those of other 
 regions known better to Humann and to me. 
 
 Von Luschan heard among the Yuruks a language 
 different from Turkish. He is, doubtless, right; but 
 I know nothing to confirm it. In general appear- 
 
 1 Reisen in Lykien, etc., 1889, ii., p. 216 ff. 
 
 2 So Sir C. Wilson, Handbook, Turkey (Murray), p. 68. 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 
 
 ance and way of talking they seemed to me very 
 like the Turkmens. In 1880. I spent some days in 
 a Yuruk winter village in Mt. Sipylos near Smyrna. 
 After a very wet day, which much impeded ex- 
 ploration,! next morning asked the chief, a splendid- 
 looking old man of about eighty, what he thought 
 of the prospect of weather, thinking that his long 
 experience would have made him weather-wise. 
 His answer was in the true Turkish style, grave, 
 measured, sententious : " How should I know the 
 weather ? God knows. If the sun shines, it will be 
 fine weather ; if it rains, the weather will be bad." 
 So his answer was translated to me. 
 
 Dr. Von Luschan denies that intermarriage ever 
 takes place between Yuruks and Turks. I have, 
 however, known an example. In 1886 one of our 
 men, named Veli, was a puzzle to me in character ; 
 he was always good-humoured and light-hearted, 
 always good company, always idle, never to be 
 trusted to do anything or take any trouble out of 
 my sight, in short, utterly unlike a Turk. At last 
 he could stand the work no longer, shammed ill- 
 ness, got himself laid up and doctored, and we went 
 on without him. Our other man, Akhmet, one of 
 the best Turks I have known, 1 explained matters. 
 Veli was no Turk, but a Yuruk, who had married a 
 woman of his village and settled down there. Akh- 
 1 See P . 45. 
 
IO8 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 met had great contempt for Yuruks, and thought 
 them a useless and worthless lot ; but he would not 
 bring disgrace on Veli, so long as it might dohim harm, 
 and therefore told nothing until Veli had deserted. 
 
 That excellent traveller, Mr. Bent, gives an in- 
 teresting account of the Yuruks of Taurus in the 
 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, loth 
 Aug., 1890, to which the curious reader may be 
 referred. He attributes to them a more poly- 
 gamous habit than I should have thought right, and 
 he decidedly differs from Von Luschan as regards 
 marriage, saying that they are not very particular 
 where they steal a wife. He is, however, a better 
 authority than I am on this point. 
 
 IV. AVSHAHR. The Avshahrs are a race of 
 strange history. Their chief seat is in the north- 
 west of Persia ; and Sir A. H. Layard gives a very 
 interesting account of his experiences among them. 
 Another considerable body of them now inhabits 
 the Anti-Taurus range between the rivers Zamanti 
 and Sarus. These formerly dwelt on the high 
 rolling uplands between Sivas and Kaisari to the 
 east of the river Halys, called the Uzun-Yaila 
 (Long Summer- Quarters), where they maintained 
 themselves in almost complete independence of 
 the Turkish authority. The government profited 
 by the Circassian immigration about thirty-five 
 years ago to find a means of reducing the powerful 
 
OF ASIA MINOR IOQ 
 
 and turbulent Avshahr. They presented the Uzun- 
 Yaila to the Circassians, and bade them enter in 
 and take possession. This was a thoroughly 
 Turkish plan ; whichever side conquered, the 
 government would be rid of two troubles, for in 
 a war between two such races the losers would be 
 sadly broken in numbers and power, and even the 
 winners would suffer severely. In the end, after a 
 hard struggle, the remnant of the Avshahrs was 
 driven into the Anti-Taurus, and the Circassians 
 now own all the Uzun-Yaila. 
 
 Cooped up in these glens, the Avshahrs have 
 lost much of the nomadic character ; they are 
 adopting the settled habit ; and, shorn of their 
 former power, they are far from being so free as 
 they were on the Great Yailas. But even yet they 
 are far bolder and prouder than the Turkish vil- 
 lagers. In 1882, when a zaptieh who was with us 
 began to demand camp-requisites in his usual 
 hectoring style, he was told to remember that he 
 was now in the mountains, and that, if he uttered 
 another word in that tone, they would beat him 
 till he could not stand. 
 
 But there are other Avshahr villages in Asia 
 Minor in which the recollection of racial character 
 has been almost or entirely lost. It is not uncom- 
 mon to find a village named Avshahr : in the valley 
 of the Kazanes (Kara-Eyuk-Ova) there are two, 
 
110 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 distinguished as Avshahr and Kum-Avshahr. 1 In 
 all such cases it is clear that a nomad group of 
 Avshahrs has been stranded, and has settled down 
 to village life ; the group was at first distinguished 
 from surrounding peoples by its tribal name, and 
 this has now become a mere appellation for the 
 village. 
 
 V. RECENT REFUGEES. The Circassians are in 
 many respects the most interesting race in Asiatic 
 Turkey. After the Russian conquest of the Cau- 
 casus, large numbers of the Mohammedan Circass- 
 ians took refuge in Turkey, where the government 
 promised them welcome and lands. Most of the 
 immigrants learned to repent bitterly of having 
 trusted a Turkish government promise. The 
 officials, who were entrusted with the duty of 
 settling them, went about their task in the usual 
 style, promising always, performing nothing, aim- 
 ing only at plundering the refugees of whatever 
 they possessed. But the Circassians were not so 
 submissive as Turks. Most of them took to 
 robbery, and seized what they could find. One 
 band, as I was told, who had been several times 
 cheated by the Pasha at Amasia with promises of 
 land, seized him in the government house, and 
 compelled him by threats of death to execute a 
 deed settling them on land in the district. Most 
 
 1 Kum, Sand. 
 
OF ASIA MINOR III 
 
 characteristic of Turkish policy was the way in 
 which the main body was planted in the Long 
 Yailas (see p. 109). 
 
 Similar, but much worse, has been the experience 
 of the refugees from European districts, Bosnia, 
 Bulgaria, etc., who came into Asia after the last 
 war, 1878. This considerable accession should have 
 added greatly to the strength of the country. The 
 land is not half enough populated, and the popu- 
 lation is dwindling. Yet the government could 
 find nowhere to plant the refugees. They wandered 
 over the face of the earth, and found no rest for 
 the sole of their foot. In 1881 and later, we met 
 many companies of them ; and often they came 
 weeping and entreating the help of the " English 
 Pasha," who had been sent to introduce reforms 
 into the country. Their tale was always the same : 
 they had been sent to one place after another by 
 the Turkish Refugee Commission : everywhere 
 they had been refused by the people, and sent 
 away : nobody would do anything for them : 
 nobody would entertain them : their cattle were 
 sold : their money was gone : they were starving. 
 And this in a country naturally rich, fertile, and 
 only half populated ! It seems strange to us of the 
 north that these refugees should have been so slow 
 to think of "the good old rule, the simple plan, 
 that they should take who have the power ". But 
 
112 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 our people can never fully understand the obedient 
 and peaceable spirit of the ordinary Orientals in 
 such circumstances : men who have plenty of 
 courage and make excellent soldiers will sit sub- 
 missive to injustice and misery, regarding it as the 
 will of God, where a northern race would at once 
 rebel. Moreover, they were made powerless through 
 separation, for the Refugee Commission, warned 
 by former experience with the Circassians, took 
 care to break up the refugees into small parties. 
 
 At last, however, they were all settled : and the 
 traveller will occasionally come across a village 
 more than usually poor, yet differing in style from 
 the abject misery and depression of the tchiftlik 
 villages (p. 65) ; and the reason of this poverty 
 is explained because the people, being refugees, 
 have not yet been able to attain even the scanty 
 and humble comforts of a Turkish village. The 
 usual name of such villages is Mohajir-Keui 
 (Refugee Village) ; the older inhabitants distinguish 
 them in this way, and a historical fact is thus 
 crystallised in the name. Similarly, one finds over 
 the country numerous villages, Tcherkess-Keui, 
 Abadza-Keui (Abadza are one of the Circassian 
 tribes), etc. ; and thus a study of Turkish village 
 names reveals a series of strata of population. 
 
 The Circassians, who have in many cases taken 
 by force their present homes, have ever since been 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 113 
 
 almost in a state of war with their Turkish neigh- 
 bours, who regard them with intense hatred and 
 fear. Your archaeologist can hardly induce his 
 Turkish servants to enter a Circassian village. In 
 1888 my wife and I, reaching a Circassian village at 
 noon after a six hours' ride, stopped to lunch. We 
 sat down in the verandah of a house ; our two 
 servants put up our horses and disappeared. We 
 spent near three hours talking with a number of 
 Circassians, who gathered round. All Circassians 
 have a great natural faculty for geography, and 
 good intellectual power generally ; and they are 
 therefore always interesting to talk to. One young 
 fellow, a stranger stopping, like us, in the village, had 
 travelled widely, and we had a long and animated 
 discussion whether he or I had seen more of Turkey. 
 When we intimated a desire to go on, the Circassians 
 got ready our horses, brought them, and were ex- 
 traordinarily cordial. We rode out of the village, 
 and about a quarter of a mile on found our two ser- 
 vants waiting with their own horses, starving and 
 unhappy. That, however, was the worst case of 
 terror that I have known. 
 
 Many have had a less pleasant experience among 
 the Circassians than we. They are very expert 
 horse thieves ; and one hears many tales of their 
 exploits in that way. A friend of ours had a horse 
 
 stolen from the door of a wayside coffee-house, into 
 
 8 
 
114 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 which his servant had gone for a short time, leaving 
 the horse fastened outside. 
 
 The most ingenious and clever case I heard 
 about happened to a Turk, who was bringing a 
 fine horse down to Smyrna to sell. He was told 
 far up the country that some Circassians were fol- 
 lowing him to steal the horse ; but declared that 
 he took so good care that he did not fear them. 
 Every night he fettered his horse with chains, and 
 slept close beside it. So the days passed. On the 
 night before reaching Smyrna the weather was 
 chilly, and the Turk put his thick coat over the 
 horse's back. In the morning, he rose and pro- 
 ceeded to take off the irons in order to lead the 
 horse to water. As he unfastened them, the horse 
 started off at a headlong pace, the coat dropped off 
 and disclosed a Circassian underneath it, who 
 rapidly disappeared from sight. 
 
 VI. KURDS. My earlier experiences of the 
 Kurds were unfavourable. In the Haimane district, 
 the high-lying plains and hills, south of Angora, 
 several tribes of Kurds live a nomadic and more or 
 less independent life. They made on me the im- 
 pression of being ruder in manners, more niggardly 
 and grasping, and less hospitable, than Turks or 
 Turkmens. I remember in August, 1883, with 
 Prof. Sterrett, visiting the great Bey of the western 
 Haimane Kurds ; and he entertained us with what 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 1 15 
 
 he called sherbet, which was only dirty-looking 
 water sweetened with sugar. Sterrett manfully 
 drank his glass, and kept up our credit for decent 
 manners ; but I could not get the stuff down. 
 The same general type of character seemed to rule 
 everywhere we met them ; and in 1886 Brown and 
 I, crossing the Eastern Haimane, spent a night at 
 the camp of the other great Bey, and I acquired a 
 positive dislike for Kurds. They were not inhospit- 
 able : they sold us all we wanted, and invited us 
 to call on the great man, close to whose tent ours 
 was pitched. But they were to me repellent ; and 
 I doubt if I could ever have been able to get on 
 friendly terms with them. 
 
 The Kurds of the Haimane had the reputation 
 of being very unruly and dangerous. At one time 
 they were practically independent, and paid no 
 tribute ; but now they are more peaceable. It 
 seemed advisable in 1883 to take a zaptieh, in order 
 to have some show of authority, while we were 
 wandering in this district. He told us that the 
 Kurds were now perfectly quiet, and travelling was 
 quite safe : it had been very different formerly, but 
 the present Kaimmakain, a Circassian, had taught 
 them a lesson : he could not, of course, get 
 authority to execute any of them (p. 149), but he 
 had a practice of beating severely any one that 
 was arrested, and it chanced that every one after 
 
Il6 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 being beaten died, and the Haimane was now at 
 rest. 
 
 This was one out of many instances, in various 
 parts of the country, of the immense effect produced 
 by one or two examples of rigour. As soon as it 
 comes to be known in any district that the reins of 
 power are in a firm hand, and that disorder will be 
 punished, the whole country under that governor 
 becomes as peaceable and quiet as any part of 
 Britain ; but such governors are very rare, for a 
 governor has usually other fish to fry. The 
 Circassians are the most difficult to keep in order; 
 and they furnish a larger proportion of the thieves 
 than any other class ; their principle is the motto 
 of the old Border family, " Thou shalt want ere I 
 want". 
 
 The Kurds of the Euphrates country impressed 
 me much more favourably than those of the 
 Haimane ; but I have seen far less of them. In 
 1890, Hogarth and I, crossing their country, had 
 the reputation of being engineers prospecting for a 
 railway ; and the idea of a railway is almost always 
 highly popular. Every one knows that a railway 
 brings money, and openings for work and earning, 
 and increases the value of land. Many people also, 
 not Christians alone, welcome a railway as the 
 herald of a new form of government a la Franga, in 
 which Europeans shall renovate the country. Every 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 117 
 
 Kurd village welcomed us effusively, and at one 
 village the son of the Bey said to one of our ser- 
 vants : " All our men are thieves, but if you lose 
 anything, come to me, and I will get it back for 
 you ". Hospitality and frankness could go no 
 further than that. 1 
 
 Professor Sterrett, however, who crossed the same 
 country in 1884, says : " The whole mountain coun- 
 try between Arga and the Tokluna Su is inhabited 
 solely by Kurds, an inhospitable, murderous set of 
 filthy villains, who still preserve all the ferocious 
 characteristics of their ancestors, the ancient Kar- 
 douchoi, of whom Xenophon has little good to re- 
 port in the Anabasis" ; and he wrote to me at the 
 time that his whole party had a narrow escape from 
 them. 
 
 VII. The number of minor varieties of people 
 who are, or to the superficial traveller might seem 
 to be, Mohammedan is large, Noghai (pronounced 
 Noi) and other Tatars, Ansarieh (of whom Disraeli 
 gave such a glowing and high-coloured description 
 in Tancred), Yezidi or Devil Worshippers, etc. 
 But, as I have come little, or not at all, into rela- 
 tions with them, except the Tatars (a quaint, always 
 amusing people of low intellectual calibre, but not 
 unpleasant to deal with, so long as you don't expect 
 much from them), they do not enter into the plan 
 
 1 A supposed Kurd, p. 48. 
 
Il8 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 of this book. The Takhtaji, a strange people, are 
 briefly described in chapter xi. 
 
 The most marked way in which difference of 
 race makes itself obvious to the traveller is in the 
 appearance and action of the women. In one 
 village you will observe that the women are closely 
 veiled and keep themselves absolutely apart. If 
 they see you at a distance they get out of the way ; 
 if you come suddenly upon them, they veil them- 
 selves more closely, turn their faces towards the 
 wall, and stand so till you have passed ; but 
 curiosity is strong, and if you turn and rudely 
 cast a glance over your shoulder after passing, you 
 will generally see that they are gazing at the 
 strange horsemen, and you make them again hastily 
 veil themselves. Some of them, however, seem so 
 hopelessly broken in spirit by the continuous 
 drudgery which constitutes the life of a peasant 
 Turkish woman, that they have lost the power to 
 take any interest in anything. 
 
 In the next village, a mile or two away, the 
 women may leave their faces uncovered, mingle 
 freely with the men, and readily converse with 
 strangers. Among all the nomadic or semi-nomadic 
 races, freedom and openness characterise the 
 women more or less ; these preserve the real old 
 Turkish custom. The Turkish tribes originally 
 
OF ASIA MINOR lip 
 
 did not practise the seclusion of women ; they 
 learned that custom from the Arabs and the 
 Koran, and perhaps also from the Greeks, among 
 whom women were confined to a very retired life. 
 It is only among the Osmanli Turks of cities 
 and settled villages that seclusion is rigorously 
 practised. 
 
 It was once my lot to spend some time in the 
 sole company of a number of Avshahr women. 
 Crossing the Anti-Taurus mountains in 1882 with 
 Sir Charles Wilson, we came to a group of mile- 
 stones by the roadside, a few miles east of Comana. 
 As the rest of the party were in a hurry, and it 
 seemed to me necessary to stay some considerable 
 time and make impressions, I was left behind with 
 a zaptieh. While the impressions were drying on 
 the stones, a sudden very heavy thunderstorm 
 came on ; and we took refuge, much against my 
 will, in an Avshahr village half a mile away. I 
 felt uneasy lest some trouble might arise, for the 
 zaptieh was the man who had got into difficulties 
 at another Avshahr village two days before (p. 109). 
 Armed with a waterproof, I did not mind the rain ; 
 but the zaptieh did ; and I did not like to make 
 him go on. We entered a house, in which there 
 was no one but an elderly woman ; and I sat 
 down on the cushions which she spread, while 
 the zaptieh bustled about, talked to her, and 
 
120 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 found out that there were "written stones" in 
 an inner chamber. I went in, and found that, 
 while the outer room was a wooden hut, built of 
 rough logs, with chinks through which the wind 
 whistled, the inner room was to a considerable 
 extent dug out of the hill side, and contained a 
 large fireplace, the two side stones of which were 
 splendid Roman milestones. The zaptieh and the 
 old woman remained in the outer room talking. 
 Having hurriedly copied the stones, I returned 
 and found that the zaptieh had gone, leaving me 
 alone with the woman. I found the situation em- 
 barrassing. Among the Turks one learns to respect 
 scrupulously their customs in regard to women and 
 to religion ; and it becomes almost second nature 
 to think as they do. But in this case, on the 
 analogy of Turkish houses, I thought that the 
 outer room was the public room (selamlik), while 
 the inner chamber was more private and sacred to 
 the women and the family life ; and it seemed 
 proper to return as soon as possible to the selamlik, 
 even though there was a solitary woman there. I 
 had hardly sat down, when a dozen women came 
 in, eager to see the stranger : some sat on the 
 floor, others stood round, and I became aware that a 
 score more, less bold or more youthful, were peep- 
 ing through the doorway and the chinks of the 
 wall. This was still more perplexing : if a few 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 121 
 
 Avshahr chiefs should return, and object to the 
 situation, it would be difficult to explain my con- 
 duct satisfactorily. It was all the more embarrass- 
 ing that I could find nothing to say to the women. 
 I knew very little Turkish at that time (having as 
 yet always had the aid of a Greek or English- 
 speaking interpreter) ; all the words and phrases 
 fled from me except " How old are you ? " But I 
 could not venture on so personal a question, not 
 knowing in what spirit it might be received ; and 
 the reception which the zaptieh's impertinence to 
 the Avshahr men had met with two days ago made 
 me think with alarm about the consequences of 
 addressing any dangerous question to the women. 
 The seclusion of women began to assume un- 
 suspected excellences in my estimation ; and I 
 longed to have it made universal in Asia Minor. 
 One thing was clear : those who were in the room 
 had no objection to being stared at, and no reluct- 
 ance to stare at me. One woman brought a piece 
 of carpet, spread it carefully close in front of me, 
 sat down on it, and gazed long and steadily in my 
 face. I was profoundly thankful when the rain 
 slackened and the zaptieh returned, and we could 
 begin our ride of eight hours across the mountains 
 to rejoin the main body. 
 
 The incident, trifling in itself, is worth recounting 
 in order to bring out how much depends on know- 
 
122 THE MOHAMMEDAN RACES 
 
 ing the ways of the people among whom one is 
 travelling : even after being two and a half years in 
 Turkey, I was quite nonplussed by Avshahr customs. 
 The impressions of a traveller to whom everything 
 is strange are very apt to spring from his own mind 
 more than from the real facts. 
 
 The most depressing and melancholy part of 
 the traveller's Turkish experiences relates to the 
 women and their position. As a rule, the peasant 
 women have such a hard life of constant work from 
 a very early age, their life is so devoid of relief, of 
 enjoyment, of educating or humanising influences, 
 they seem so tattered, ragged, forlorn, and uncared 
 for, as they stand with their face towards a mud 
 wall while you ride past, that indignation and 
 disgust grow strong in your mind against the social 
 system that treats women in this way. A Greek- 
 speaking Albanian servant, Akhmet, whom we had 
 with us in Oct., Nov., 1881, pointed to a herd of 
 Turkish women toiling like beasts of burden near 
 a village, and remarked with a world of scorn in 
 his tone : " Thus are the Turks : the wife of 
 Akhmet sits at home". It would be difficult to 
 live much among the peasants without learning to 
 sympathise with the " Women's Movement " in 
 more civilised lands. The total want of pleasant 
 intercourse and friendly open relations between 
 men and women greatly intensifies the monotony 
 
OF ASIA MINOR 123 
 
 and the ignorance of village life, and also produces 
 many other evils a subject on which I will not 
 enter. But after a long time among Turks, it was 
 quite delightful and refreshing to meet, beside a 
 Kurd village, a young man driving out a bullock- 
 cart to the harvest, and a young woman walking 
 beside it, talking and laughing and engrossed in 
 each other's company. It was like a breath of 
 Europe, bearing the scent of home. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT IN ASIATIC TURKEY. 
 
 THE aim of these unpretending sketches is simply 
 to describe what I have seen in Turkey, as it now 
 is ; but in order to suggest the real meaning of the 
 present facts and how much importance lies in ac- 
 curate observation of the small things that pass 
 before the traveller's eyes, it is necessary to point 
 out the relation which the present bears to the 
 past. 
 
 At the present day the central movement in Asia 
 Minor is, what it always has been, a conflict be- 
 tween the Eastern and the Western spirit. The 
 oldest fact that we can gather in its history is 
 the crossing over from Europe of Phrygian and 
 Thracian tribes, who, seizing on part of the country, 
 either ruled it as a dominant caste or amalgamated 
 in varying degrees of strength with the native 
 population. The poet of the Iliad conceived the 
 war of Troy as the war of Greek against Asiatic, 
 Graecia barbariae lento collisa duello ; and Herodotus 
 in his opening chapters describes the steps in the 
 long conflict between Europe and Asia, culminat- 
 
 (124) 
 
PAST AND PRESENT IN ASIATIC TURKEY 125 
 
 ing in the gigantic effort made by Xerxes to strike 
 down the Greeks, and the decisive victory of the 
 disciplined few over the barbarian multitudes at 
 Salamis, Plataea, and Mykale. After that supreme 
 effort on the part of Asia, the power of Europe 
 grew stronger in the Debatable Land of Asia Minor, 
 until, guided by the genius and inspired by the 
 lofty ideals of Alexander the Great, it swept over 
 Asia far beyond the Debatable Land even up to 
 the Himalaya mountains and the Indus valley. 
 But a wave like that ebbed almost as fast as it had 
 overflowed ; Central Asia was overrun, but was 
 practically unaffected by Greek civilisation ; even 
 in Asia Minor Oriental reaction was led by 
 Mithridates. Rome came to the aid of Greece, 
 caught the torch of Western civilisation from Greek 
 hands, and was busy for centuries organising and 
 governing and training in western ways the peoples 
 of Asia Minor. But to facilitate their work, the 
 Romans had to adapt their administration to the 
 people ; and it was not an unmixed western 
 character that was imparted to the land. It is true 
 that the great cities put on a western appearance 
 and took western names ; Latin and Greek were 
 the languages of government, of education, and of 
 polite society. But this appearance was still only 
 superficial. Greek had not become the popular 
 language (apart from the Christians) even in the 
 
126 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 third century after Christ : the mass of the pagan 
 peoples in the country districts spoke Phrygian 
 and Lycaonian and Cappadocian ; though those 
 who wrote wrote in Greek, and the officials governed 
 by the use of Greek and Latin. 
 
 The Christian religion did what Rome had failed 
 to do : it imposed on the people its own language, 
 in which its sacred books were written, Greek. 
 The western spirit became far stronger in the fourth 
 century than ever before ; and it is a strangely 
 mixed and interesting picture of eastern Asia Minor 
 that is revealed to us in the pages of the great Cap- 
 padocian fathers, Basil and the Gregories. But 
 even the Church was not strong enough to separate 
 the Debatable Land completely from Asia and to 
 associate it thoroughly with Europe. The popular 
 Christianity of Phrygia was never like the Chris- 
 tianity of Europe. Sects of enthusiasts who per- 
 petuated or revived the Oriental character in their 
 religious forms always flourished there ; the Ortho- 
 dox writers inveigh against the many heresies of 
 Anatolia ; and the Orthodox Church had to permit 
 in the worship of local saints the native char- 
 acteristics, which they had failed to eradicate. 
 
 In the Byzantine period, after the time of 
 Justinian, there was a slow but steady revival of 
 the Oriental spirit, signs of which are apparent to 
 the scholar in every department of life. In the 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 127 
 
 seventh century, or later, many of the Greek city 
 names disappeared, and old native names were 
 revived. In the political sphere, the great and 
 strong machine of organised government, which 
 Roman genius and skill had constructed, was not 
 easily destroyed and lasted for many centuries. 
 But, as time passed on, the character of the govern- 
 ment slowly changed, and the Western element 
 grew weaker ; dynasty succeeded dynasty, and 
 each was more Oriental in type than its predecessor. 
 Under the titles of Roman Emperors, Phrygians, 
 Isaurians, Cappadocians, Armenians were masked, 
 until at last the final step was taken, and the Turk 
 sat on the throne of the Roman Augusti, or rather 
 of the Romaic Sebastoi. 
 
 That last change was not so great as it is some- 
 times represented. The genius of the country 
 tends always towards the same goal ; for centuries 
 it had been moving towards it ; and about A.D. 
 1070, most of Asia Minor became Oriental in 
 language and in government. The region of Con- 
 stantinople, separate now from the mass of Asia 
 Minor, preserved for a long time the " Romaic " 
 forms, and was in some respects less Oriental than 
 before, for Greek dynasties, like the Palaiologoi, 
 Greek in name and repute at least, and no longer 
 unmistakably Phrygian or Armenian, ruled at Con- 
 stantinople, and maintained for three centuries and 
 
128 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 a half the struggle whether Turk or Roman should 
 govern the western fringe and the coast lands of 
 Asia Minor. But in 1070 the battle of Manzikert 
 had laid the main mass of Asia Minor prostrate 
 and helpless at the feet of the Seljuk Turks ; and 
 their right to it was formally acknowledged by the 
 weak claimants to the Romaic throne in the 
 following years. From that time dates the practi- 
 cally unbroken rule of the Turks over most of the 
 inner country, though the Romaic Empire lasted 
 at Constantinople till 1453 ; and in the twelfth and 
 following centuries Turkish names for old Graeco- 
 Roman cities of the land are often employed even 
 by Byzantine historians. Kolonia is now called 
 Axara or Taxara, the Turkish Ak-Serai, "White 
 Mansion " (with or without the Greek definite 
 article before it) ; Iconium is spoken of as Tokonion, 
 the Turkish Konia (with Greek definite article pre- 
 fixed) ; occasionally, the Greek name having been 
 lost, the Turkish name takes its place and is trans- 
 lated by Byzantine historians, as in Mavrokastro 
 (Kara-Hissar) or Neokastro (Yeni-Kale) : and we 
 find the pure Turkish names Ak-Sheher, Bey- 
 Sheher, etc., spelt in Greek letters, just as, at the 
 present day, one may see over the door of a Greek 
 Church in a Cappadocian Christian village an 
 inscription in Greek lettering but in pure Turkish 
 language. Then, too, many old Oriental names for 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 1 29 
 
 great cities, names most of which had disappeared 
 from educated speech and official usage for 1000 
 years, return into use ; and it becomes evident that 
 our superficial idea, derived from literature, that 
 these names had been lost and forgotten, is wholly 
 erroneous : the common people had retained the 
 Oriental names, and had never accepted the Greek 
 or Roman titles : the Turks found the Oriental 
 name still vigorous in the popular mouth, and at 
 the present day the Greek name is forgotten, except 
 perhaps in some official Church lists, while the 
 ancient name is used by all. Such are Marash 
 (Marasion in Cinnamus and Anna Comnena), 
 Kharput (Kharpote in Cedrenus), etc. 
 
 For nearly eight centuries the Oriental element 
 reigned supreme and unopposed in Asia Minor ; 
 Orientalism, revenging the conquests of Alexander 
 the Great, had swept far into Europe, and the con- 
 test between East and West was maintained, not 
 on the Euphrates or the Halys, but on the Danube. 
 But, step by step, Asia has been driven back, out 
 of Greece, out of the Danube valley, across the 
 Balkans ; and now the armies are being marshalled 
 for the last war, 1 which shall set South-eastern 
 Europe free from the incubus that has oppressed it ; 
 and in Asia Minor the old struggle has recommenced. 
 
 1 This was written in reference to the general situation of the 
 last decade, not to the single phase of the Greek war, 
 
 9 
 
130 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 About 1820-1830, when part of European Greece 
 was set free, the Greek movement in Asia Minor 
 was for the moment restrained by the usual Turkish 
 policy, by massacres like that in Scio, when the 
 island was given up to pillage and slaughter : the 
 city of Scio and about fifty villages, not to mention 
 many churches and monasteries, were burnt to 
 ashes ; the leading clergy and citizens were hanged 
 in mockery of legal forms ; 30,000 people were 
 massacred within two months ; 32,000 were made 
 slaves ; 30,000 destitute refugees escaped to other 
 lands ; and a miserable remnant of people were 
 left * in that once rich, industrious, and splendid 
 island, a centre of education and commerce. 
 
 By means like this, the Turks for a time prevented 
 and postponed the development of Greek feeling ; 
 but it was only for a time. On the west coasts of 
 Asia Minor, the Greek element has increased 
 immensely in strength, while the Turkish element 
 has grown weaker. Every one who has any 
 familiarity with the Aeolic and Ionian coasts knows 
 of many a flourishing Greek village, which not so 
 many years ago was empty or peopled only by 
 Turks. The Turks are losing, or have in places 
 
 1 It is well known that a prominent and accomplished Turkish 
 official in high civil rank at Constantinople is the son of a 
 young Sciote boy, saved at the massacre by a Turkish officer, 
 and adopted by him, 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 131 
 
 lost, their hold on the coast and on the valleys 
 that open on the coast. The Oriental element 
 does not retreat or emigrate ; it is not driven out 
 by force ; it dies out in these parts by a slow but 
 sure decay ; you can only say that here the people 
 was, and here it has almost ceased to be. As the 
 railway goes inland, the Greek element goes with it 
 and even in front of it. Trade is from the first 
 almost entirely in their hands. Even where the 
 capital is foreign, the practical working is to a 
 great extent directed by Greeks. Soon the land, 
 too, passes into their hands. Your village Turk is 
 helpless and improvident. It is a point of 
 honour with him to make a great show at a mar- 
 riage. He borrows money, usually to make a 
 display at some ceremonial, to buy a substitute 
 in the conscription, or to give in bribery to an 
 official : then his ruin is speedy, and the land on 
 whose security he has borrowed passes out of his 
 possession. 
 
 When we first visited the Lycos valley in 
 October, 1881, the railway had not gone up so far. 
 In Serai-Keui we were entertained by a Greek, who 
 told us that he was the only Christian in the village, 1 
 and that he had come there as agent for one of the 
 two railways, which competed for the trade of the 
 
 1 Arundel mentions that a few Greek houses existed in Serai- 
 Keui in 1826. 
 
132 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 valley. In 1882, or early in 1883, the railway line 
 was opened as far as Serai-Keui, and Serai-Keui 
 has steadily grown Greek. Turkish statistics for 
 1894 g ive i ts Greek population as 450 ; but this 
 was probably too low an estimate. Growth in 
 Turkey is, of course, always slow. 
 
 The Ottoman Railway has now gone up beyond 
 Serai-Keui some seventy miles, to Ishekli (Eu- 
 meneia) and to Dineir (Apameia-Celaenae) ; and 
 the same process is going on all along the line. 
 In 1891 we were hospitably entertained at a com- 
 modious and comfortable country house, four hours 
 from Dineir, standing on an estate which was the 
 property of a European Levantine family: in 1883 
 the spot was a waste, uncultivated and forlorn, 
 where we hunted for inscriptions in a deserted, 
 solitary cemetery. Fifteen or sixteen hours east 
 of Dineir, in a Pisidian valley, on the head waters 
 of the Eurymedon, where, probably, no Christian 
 set foot for centuries, we found in 1890 a tchift- 
 lik (estate), belonging to a Greek family resident 
 at Egerdir near Sparta : there was a considerable 
 degree of activity perceptible about it, and a score 
 or more of rude inscriptions in an unknown Pisidian 
 dialect, found in the digging and building opera- 
 tions carried out by the new Greek owners, had 
 been collected in an outhouse, which thus was 
 constituted into a rough and rude museum. It is 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 133 
 
 characteristic of the Greek spirit and the ad- 
 miration of even the rudest and least educated 
 Greeks for antiquities and education, that on 
 this outpost of Greek life in the Turkish moun- 
 tains there should be already what you might 
 call a museum, even though it was only a rough 
 shed, used for storing other things as well as 
 antiquities. 
 
 The steady, inexorable, irresistible spread of 
 European, and mainly of Greek, influence in the 
 western parts of Asia Minor, is by far the most 
 striking fact in modern Turkey. That progress is 
 so patent that the Turks make practically no 
 attempt to resist it : it is accepted as inevitable. 
 The Asiatic Greeks have the future in their hands ; 
 and no man or no policy will be successful, which 
 does not recognise that fact and build upon it as 
 foundation. It has often come home to me, and 
 I have often pointed out to fellow-travellers, that 
 as soon as a few Greek traders establish them- 
 selves in a district of Western Anatolia, the Turkish 
 governor who tries to go against them has not a 
 dog's life of it. They play into each other's hands ; 
 and they have on their side the Turk's despair in 
 his own future and his belief that " Reform " (the 
 word is terribly familiar to him ; it is the fetish 
 which he would fain propitiate) must come, and 
 that, as it comes, it will sweep him away. The 
 
134 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 subject Greek feels that the world is with him ; 
 the Turkish governor feels that it is against 
 him. 1 
 
 The first thing that impressed me, when I began 
 to learn something of Turkish feeling in 1880-1881, 
 was the hopeless despondency which was openly 
 expressed about the future of the country. Prophe- 
 cies were current that the term of Turkish power 
 was at hand. Everywhere one observed signs of 
 the same feeling that prompted the saying of a 
 bin-bashi (" head over a thousand," an officer cor- 
 responding in rank to a major in the British army) 
 at Angora "We have deserved the ruin that is 
 surely before us and nothing can save us ". I have 
 known soldiers who fought in the last Russo-Turkish 
 War declare that the misfortunes which befell the 
 Turks were a just punishment for the treatment 
 of the wounded Russians by their own men (especi- 
 ally by the irregular troops). Although the best 
 troops in the Turkish army and excellent troops 
 they are come from Anatolia, I never heard those 
 who had served express anything but dislike of 
 warfare, and a devout wish that they might have 
 no more of it. Not the slightest sign ever came 
 
 1 This refers to the period when I knew Turkey personally, 
 ending in 1891. I have some reason to believe that the Moham- 
 medan revival, carefully engineered from the palace, has grown 
 steadily since then. 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 135 
 
 under my notice of anything like esprit de corps, or 
 of that pride in the service which rarely fails in an 
 old soldier of our army. The nearest approach to 
 it I ever saw was in an old man whom I doctored 
 with quinine at a guardhouse on a trade road in 
 Pontus (said to be rather infested by robbers). He 
 had fought under General Williams at Kars against 
 the Russians, and described with great feeling the 
 kindness, the self-sacrifice, and the bravery of the 
 English general, declaring that he would never 
 believe anything bad of the English. 
 
 This feeling was, doubtless, due in part to the 
 complete destruction of their armies by the Russians 
 in the recent war ; and so far as that was the cause, 
 the feeling might be only temporary. But I believe 
 that it arose much more from the settled conviction 
 that their system of government was bad. The 
 idea of " Reform," even the word, had become 
 familiar to them by frequent reiteration ; they 
 believed in its necessity, but not in its possibility. 
 Of course, the ordinary villagers had not risen to 
 such a pitch of reasoning power as to consciously 
 think like this ; they knew nothing except their 
 village concerns, their fear of the officials, and their 
 dislike to the thought of being forced away from 
 home to fight. But in towns, where a little was 
 known of the outside world, that was the general 
 tone. 
 
136 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 In 1882 a change was very marked, and' has 
 been so ever since. There began a distinct re- 
 vival of Mohammedan feeling. The prophecies 
 current were no longer about the term of Turkish 
 power, they were that the year 1300 (beginning 3ist 
 Oct., 1882) was an epoch of Mohammedan power, 
 bringing either new life and strength or utter and 
 complete ruin. The change of adjective, no longer 
 Turkish but Mohammedan, was significant of much 
 that was to follow. The skilful variation in the old 
 prophecy reminds one of the old Athenian oracle 
 which was adapted by people at the opening of 
 the Peloponnesian War to suit their own conception 
 of the course of events, some reading loimos (pesti- 
 lence), while others declared that limos (famine) was 
 the right word. So in Turkey in 1882, it was no 
 longer the Turkish rule that was spoken of, "it 
 was the Mohammedan L power that was at its 
 crisis, and the people who never would have will- 
 ingly raised their hand in support of their race 
 were eager in defence of their religion. There can 
 be no doubt that such a complete revolution of 
 feeling was the result of a skilfully planned agita- 
 tion directed from some centre. Hatred of the 
 English was especially strong; indeed I cannot 
 affirm that I saw actual proof of much feeling 
 
 i I purposely quote the following words verbatim from a paper 
 which I published in the Scotsman, i6th September, 1882. 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 137 
 
 against other Christians j 1 and certainly this hatred 
 was more conspicuous among the Government 
 officials than among any other class of the people. 
 When the news once came that a Turkish pasha 
 had defeated an English fleet and destroyed many 
 ships, the rejoicing was great ; " and great uneasi- 
 ness as to possible disturbances was felt in some 
 non-Turkish circles. It was instructive to note 
 the sudden fall in the emotions of the Turks, when 
 the news of the bombardment of Alexandria and 
 the complete defeat of the Mohammedan forces 
 could no longer be disbelieved. The German 
 consul in a Turkish city told us shortly afterwards 
 " that for months previously the English had been 
 the object of most virulent language there ; but 
 when the news arrived, there was a sudden lull. 
 There is, however, little doubt that any disaster 
 to our army in Egypt might have produced wide- 
 reaching consequences through Turkey." 2 
 
 A friend, a foreign consul, who united with the 
 education of a European observer the intimacy of 
 a native with Turkish affairs, mentioned to me 
 that the Dellils (see p. 105), who in former years 
 were common people, illiterate and ignorant, mere 
 
 1 Those who 'lived in the more eastern parts of Turkey did see 
 it and bear witness. 
 
 2 Again quoted, with omission of some unimportant words 
 from the same article, Scotsman, i6th September, 1882. 
 
138 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 itinerant gatherers of alms, began about 1882 to be 
 persons of a different class. They were educated 
 men, with whom begging was a mere pretence, 
 and who stirred up the people to make a great 
 effort for the regeneration of the Mohammedan 
 power. 
 
 That was the beginning, so far as outsiders like me 
 could observe, of a movement that has gone on 
 continuously since. It has been prominent chiefly 
 in the eastern parts of Anatolia, and the region 
 towards Constantinople. It has not so much af- 
 fected the Greek districts towards the west, though 
 great uneasiness has existed there, and no reason- 
 able being can doubt that the process, if successful 
 in the east, will spread to the west. It is a tem- 
 porary revival of Orientalism, similar to that which 
 took place under Mithridates, and not unlike it in 
 the method, viz., the attempted extermination of 
 all who are affected by the Western spirit. But, in 
 this case, dread of European armies shields the life 
 of European residents ; whereas Mithridates began 
 by a general massacre of all Romans in Asia 
 Minor. 
 
 Naturally, one cannot be a listener to the sermons 
 that are preached ; but the impression made on 
 myself and on better observers has been, that the 
 directors and preachers of the faith in Turkey have 
 been engaged for a good many years in preparing 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 139 
 
 the Mohammedan revival ; the means whereby 
 Turkish power is restored is always the same 
 massacre and the preparation consists in preaching 
 that it is a virtue and a merit before heaven to slay 
 and spoil the infidels. 
 
 Further, it is not, so far as I know, doubted by 
 any one who is familiar with Turkey, that this 
 revival of Orientalism had been planned and 
 directed from one centre, and that the effects seen 
 since 1882 are the result of long preparation. This 
 great historical movement is due to the will and 
 the wit of that remarkable man, the present Sultan, 
 who alone did not despair of the state, but with 
 marvellous patience and hard work and diplomatic 
 skill, set himself to strive against fate. Shelley, 
 in his Hellas, puts into Sultan Mahmud's mouth 
 the words : 
 
 Even as that moon 
 
 Renews itself shall we be not renewed ; 
 Far other bark than ours were needed now 
 To stem the torrent of descending time. 
 
 But Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid believed that the 
 Crescent would be renewed, and he has for twenty 
 years faced the torrent in his shattered and hardly 
 seaworthy bark, kept her head upstream, and made 
 astonishing way. With an almost bankrupt trea- 
 sury, a navy which has rotted till the ships hardly 
 hold together, a beaten and broken army, a dis- 
 
140 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 affected people, surrounded by disloyalty, in con- 
 stant peril from his own subjects, held on his throne 
 only by the diplomatists of Europe and their 
 mutual hatred and mistrust and the dread of each 
 that another may secure their coveted share of 
 dismembered Turkey, he reigns still, the sole 
 mover of Turkish policy, autocrat to a degree that 
 no other recent Sultan has been; and under him 
 Mohammedanism and Orientalism have gathered 
 fresh strength to defy the feeling of Europe, 
 strength lying in the moral power that resolute 
 purpose and religious fervour give against selfish 
 or blundering adversaries. 
 
 He gauged the situation from the first ; he saw 
 that the party of Reform in Turkey was hastening 
 on the dissolution of Ottoman rule, for a reformed 
 Turkey was a contradiction in terms. He saw that 
 Reform was inconsistent with a Sultan of the Otto- 
 man type, that Sultan and Khalif were united in 
 one person, and that, when there ceased to be a 
 Khalif in Constantinople, then Mohammedanism 
 in Europe and in Asia Minor was doomed. He 
 saw too that English policy was always and necess- 
 arily directed to secure Reform, that the dream of 
 English statesmen and their watchword were always 
 " a reformed and strong Turkey," that the Young 
 Turkish party of Reform was the Anglophile party, 
 and that its strength lay in the general belief that it 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 141 
 
 had England to support it ; in short, that England was 
 the arch-enemy of all that he believed in and de- 
 sired. From the first day when his influence began 
 to be felt, he has worked and watched, prayed and 
 waited, intrigued and chosen his allies, with the 
 view of destroying English influence in Turkey. 
 Step by step he has first weakened and then de- 
 stroyed his enemies ; and in most of his steps he 
 has had the help of some party in England, which 
 was induced to ruin English influence under the mis- 
 taken idea that it was furthering " British interests ". 
 
 It is no recent theory of my own that is here 
 stated : it is what has been said to me many a time 
 in the years 1880-1884, when I was residing almost 
 continuously in Turkey, by men of great experience 
 in the country, men of many nationalities. Some 
 spoke with regret, some with indifference, some with 
 satisfaction, but all with conviction: "your govern- 
 ment seems never to recognise that the Sultan is 
 its great and bitter enemy ; and so it is always 
 playing into his hands "- 1 
 
 That is the reason why the Sultan has found 
 friends in Russia and in every enemy of Britain. 
 He has been playing the game which they desire 
 to see successful : he has been preventing Asia 
 
 1 The same ideas were expressed in a series of papers which 
 appeared in the Scotsman, 1882, and fifteen years only confirm 
 what I then wrote. 
 
142 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 Minor from passing under British influence. Lord 
 Salisbury protests in the strongest terms that 
 Britain has never entertained any schemes of ac- 
 quisition in Asia Minor. In the first place, how- 
 ever, there is probably no Russian or German or 
 Frenchman who believes him ; and they say that, 
 after he came to the Berlin Congress pretending to 
 be free from all engagements, while all the time he 
 had up his sleeve a private bargain with the Turks 
 about the very subject which was to have been 
 settled by the Congress, his assertions as to clean 
 hands can no longer be trusted. Secondly, there 
 was probably no man in Asia Minor of any nation- 
 ality about 1879 to 1882, who was not looking 
 forward to and forecasting the probability of the 
 country passing into British hands, and the exist- 
 ence of this belief in the country was undoubtedly 
 known to the European Powers. Thirdly, events 
 were for a time all tending in that way ; and any 
 statesman who declares that he was not aware of 
 or affected by the drift of popular feeling and the 
 tendency of events in Asiatic Turkey, is protest- 
 ing to the European powers that he was careless 
 of the elementary facts of the situation. Rightly 
 or wrongly (I cannot pretend to decide) there is 
 everywhere abroad, as my correspondents in various 
 countries have always assured me, the belief that 
 Lord Salisbury was a much craftier statesman than 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 143 
 
 he will allow, that he knew much which he now 
 ignores ; and the protestations that Britain enter- 
 tains no designs in Asia Minor merely make people 
 abroad all the more sure that a British statesman's 
 word can never be trusted. 
 
 And when one looks at the facts, how can they 
 think otherwise ? When both Turkey and Russia 
 were exhausted with the war of 1877-78, Britain 
 stepped in, and like the lawyer seized most of the 
 oyster for which they had been contending, and 
 gave them each a shell. She was left in possession 
 of Cyprus (which needed only the expenditure of 
 a sum, large indeed, but an insignificant detail in 
 an English Budget, to be made an important point 
 with a new harbour), holding the Protectorate of 
 Asia Minor, champion of the Christians in Armenia, 
 checking by a system of military consuls the 
 administration of the country. The Porte was 
 powerless to resist, and could only obey. The 
 aspirations and hopes of the Christians, in whom 
 lay the real strength of the land (except in open 
 battle) hopes which had previously rested on 
 Russia were now turned towards England as 
 having guaranteed good government for them, 
 and having prevented Russia from undertaking the 
 guarantee. Britain had planted herself upon all 
 the lines of development in the country, and all 
 its strongest forces were pushing her on. A new 
 
144 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 department was created ; a series of young consuls, 
 selected by competitive examination annually, went 
 out to Turkey in regular course to learn the 
 languages of the country before beginning their 
 official work. As a piece of statesmanship, crafty 
 and unscrupulous, but able, it was a master-stroke ; 
 though I think no one among us will ever look 
 back to it without blushing for the jockeying by 
 which it was effected. But it was that kind of 
 stroke which neither of the parties who had been 
 cheated could forget or forgive. If Lord Salisbury 
 claims that he never had any designs in Asia 
 Minor, he is claiming to have been a mere dummy, 
 pushed forward by Lord Beaconsfield, and entirely 
 ignorant of the meaning of what he was doing. 
 The foreigners believe that he was an abler man 
 than that ; perhaps they are wrong ; but there is 
 some justification for their error, and its existence 
 has been a notable factor in the situation since he 
 came back to power. There was in 1 895 a possibility 
 that the Liberal foreign minister might have been 
 trusted not to be concocting some stroke of ac- 
 quisitiveness ; nobody had ever imagined him to 
 be guilty of any great stroke, and this belief 
 was a safeguard in that delicate situation. But 
 there was no possibility that Russia should trust 
 a man, whose very protestations were understood 
 by her as proofs of duplicity. 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 14$ 
 
 The only way in which Britain could atone for 
 the cunning that had given her so strong a position 
 in Asia Minor was by using that position for the 
 advancement of civilisation and the benefit of the 
 peoples of Asia Minor, just as she has used her 
 position in Egypt. The advent of the consuls was 
 understood by all to be in reality, what it was in 
 name, the inauguration of the Protectorate of Asia 
 Minor ; and it was hailed with joy and relief by 
 almost every section of the population, except the 
 officials. The Consul-General, Sir C. Wilson, was 
 a man who combined the qualifications of know- 
 ledge of the East and good judgment ; he was ably 
 seconded, and for a time all went well. Then came 
 a change of government in England and the consuls 
 were no longer supported. The corrupt officials 
 whose degradation they had insisted on were rein- 
 stated, and the old state of Turkey was resumed. 
 But the consuls were still in the country, and their 
 presence was an offence to the Porte, a sign of 
 tutelage and subordination, as well as a possible 
 danger in the event of a resumption of active policy 
 in Turkey. The Egyptian War brought an oppor- 
 tunity ; the Sultan gave his authority to Britain to 
 put down the disorder in Egypt, 1 and the consuls 
 
 1 A mere sham, as he was undoubtedly intriguing with Arabi, 
 who represented to the Arabs and Mr. Blunt an anti-Turkish, but 
 to the Turks a Mohammedan movement (Scotsman, 25th Sept., 
 1882). 
 
 10 
 
146 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 were ordered away for service in that country. I 
 have often wondered whether the second fact was 
 made a condition of the first not of course formally, 
 but in an informal way which could be disowned in 
 case of need. 
 
 Lord Rosebery, in his Edinburgh speech on I2th 
 Oct., 1896, resigning the leadership of the Liberal 
 party, stated that the military consuls were recalled 
 in 1880, or very shortly after, because they had 
 nothing to do. 1 That is a specimen of the garbled 
 versions of facts about Turkey that our statesmen 
 seem to love. The consuls were not recalled ; 
 they were ordered to Egypt on special service 
 in August, 1882. Their power departed when the 
 home government ceased to support them in 1880 ; 
 but during 1879, they were a great influence in the 
 country ; and their presence produced profound and 
 far-reaching results. They were there before the 
 eyes of Moslems and Christians alike, a continual 
 reminder of the overshadowing power of the great 
 Christian kingdom of the West. They were a sign 
 to the people, an omen of the future, " casting out 
 devils " in a literal sense, for where a Mohammedan 
 governor was found by them to be oppressive beyond 
 
 1 " Some extra consular officials were appointed in 1879 to 
 supervise any reforms that might be carried out ; but in the next 
 year, I think, or very shortly after, they were recalled, I suppose 
 because they had no reforms to supervise." 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 147 
 
 the average, his deposition followed. Now, the 
 effect produced in Turkey by one or two examples 
 is wonderful ; there is nothing like it among the 
 more stubborn and resolute peoples of the West. 
 Thus, the consuls were a beacon of hope to the 
 oppressed and repressedChristians of Eastern Turkey, 
 encouraging them to crave for justice, and fostering 
 in their hearts the inclination to demand the element- 
 ary right of personal safety for the person and the 
 family. It was a crime of the deepest dye to plant 
 this hope in the minds of the Armenian Christians, 
 and then to withdraw from the position in which 
 alone we could help them. We formed a partner- 
 ship, in order to make our partners an excuse for 
 repudiating our old debts. 
 
 So far as mere outsiders like me can judge, 
 the Ambassador Extraordinary who was sent to 
 Constantinople with special and unusual powers 
 in May, 1880, Mr. Goschen, must be held more 
 responsible than any other single individual for 
 the change. He was considered to be a man of 
 great influence in his party ; and had he understood 
 the case, and resolutely upheld the consuls, he 
 would doubtless have carried the government with 
 him. But the consuls were a creation of the out- 
 going party ; and their success was not likely to be 
 agreeable to the incomers. Moreover, the new 
 government did not wish to be troubled with an 
 
148 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 active policy in Turkey ; it desired to be quit of the 
 whole business as easily as possible, and with the 
 smallest amount of responsibility. So began the 
 wearisome farce of notes presented to the Porte 
 by the six ambassadors of the Great Powers of 
 Europe. But behind the notes there was no 
 strong compelling hand ; Britain had resolved not 
 to act ; and no one else was likely to do so. 
 British activity was henceforth limited to urging 
 the Powers to present notes ; and the Powers were 
 willing to present notes, which meant nothing, and 
 had no more result than occasionally to irritate 
 the Porte, and to keep before its mind the British 
 offence. Meanwhile the Armenians knew that the 
 notes urging on the Porte the necessity of " doing 
 something " in Armenia were due to the insistence 
 of the British ambassadors, and continued to hope 
 that at last Britain would act ; but they failed to 
 see that the more they looked to Britain, the more 
 was the face of Russia hardened against them. 
 The Sultan put the notes in the fire, flouted the 
 English in every way, showed special honour to 
 every one whom the British consuls had marked 
 for dishonour, and, naturally, was aided by those 
 Powers whose influence in Turkey grew as British 
 influence waned. No one knew better than the 
 Sultan that the other Great Powers would do 
 nothing against him so long as he was working 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 149 
 
 against England. For my own part, I cannot 
 blame them for making their gain from our loss. 
 The policy of Russia was clear and intelligible 
 throughout, and not any more selfish than ours 
 had been. 
 
 In this sketch I have attributed to the Sultan 
 intense religious enthusiasm, patient and far-sighted 
 adaptation of means to gain remote ends, extreme 
 watchfulness, and great powers of work, sufficient 
 to hold in his own hands the direction of the entire 
 course of policy, internal and external qualities 
 that are as opposite as possible to the Turkish 
 character. Further he has always been greatly 
 averse to inflicting capital punishment on any 
 individual ; now, under the extremely centralised 
 system of administration, no criminal can be exe- 
 cuted except under the Sultan's warrant ; and, as 
 this has been almost impossible to procure, he can 
 with perfect justice claim to have abolished capital 
 punishment ; and this has been a fruitful cause of 
 disorder, for the most serious crimes have often 
 gone unpunished. This also is a characteristic 
 most unlike the Turkish nature. Again, the Turks 
 are not a deeply religious race : on the contrary 
 they are as a rule far from assiduous in the cere- 
 monies of the mosque, and readily take any excuse 
 for omitting prayers ; but the Sultan was said to be 
 a member of the Rufai (Howling) Dervishes, and 
 
150 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 when the ministers on being summoned to a 
 council had to wait long, as was often the case, 
 for the Sultan's appearance, the reason was said by 
 report to be that he was with a set of Dervishes in 
 another place waiting till the ecstatic moment had 
 arrived. The prophecy used to be current (though 
 it has long died out in the development of the 
 Mohammedan revival) that the Empire of Turkey 
 was to end with an Armenian Sultan, and this was 
 the Armenian Sultan. This strange" saying was 
 explained in several ways, some of them too scan- 
 dalous for belief or quotation ; but the best attested 
 account was that his mother was an Armenian by 
 birth, who had adopted Mohammedanism. This 
 account, widely believed in 1880-1882, is given as 
 indubitable in the North American Review, Sept., 
 1896, p. 280, by Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, who knows 
 Turkey from thirty-five years' residence as few men 
 know it. In more recent years the authorised 
 statement is that the Sultan's mother was a Georgian 
 or Circassian people vary as to the exact race. 
 The important point is that every one recognises 
 how essentially unlike Turkish is the Sultan's 
 character ; and every one feels that the ex- 
 planation lies in the inheritance from his mother. 
 For my own part, the Armenian origin seems to 
 me proved by the results : only Armenian parent- 
 age gives the clue to the Sultan's character, his 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 151 
 
 unwearied carefulness, his prevision, his personal 
 timidity (which keeps him always a prisoner within 
 his own palace walls), his fear of the Turks, his 
 hatred for the Armenians, and the other qualities 
 already described. 
 
 This man, who has played the part of Mithridates 
 in the nineteenth century and played it with such 
 skill and success, with scheming head, not with 
 warlike hands, well deserves the historian's study. 
 It is a remarkable part that he has undertaken, to 
 stem the tide of change, which the three previous 
 Sultans accepted as inevitable, and to stifle the 
 growth of civilisation in Turkey, which the strongest 
 party in Turkey desired. The task would have 
 been impossible, had it not been for the resources 
 that civilisation put in his hands ; for, indubitably, 
 modern inventiveness, by facilitating destruction, 
 places enormous power in the hands of barbarism. 
 His ally, without whom he could not have done 
 nearly so much, has been Germany. It was patent 
 to every one as far back as 1882 that the Sultan, 
 feeling he had nothing to fear from German aggres- 
 sion, inclined to favour that country, which became 
 immensely influential in Constantinople and has 
 remained so ever since. Each party had much to 
 gain : neither had anything to lose. German 
 capital found an opening in Turkish enterprises ; 
 German officers organised the Turkish army ; Krupp 
 
152 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 supplied the guns, and Germans calculated the 
 range, did all the more scientific part of artillery 
 practice, and taught the soldiers to do the simpler 
 work. The Sultan wanted an effective army to 
 defend his life and to crush disaffection ; and the 
 Germans gave it to him. So long as German 
 officers are there to guide the operations, and so 
 long as they succeed in keeping the supreme 
 command out of the hands of some incapable Turk 
 (like the " hero of Plevna," l who sat behind his 
 lines, smoked, and ate, until the Russians overcame 
 his stubborn soldiers) and in the hands of some 
 good Mohammedan officer, the Sultan can do as he 
 will in the East. German railways radiate from 
 the Bosphorus over Asia Minor. German enter- 
 prises get every facility they require. People 
 may blame the selfish policy of Germany ; but her 
 policy has been no more selfish than that of every 
 other European power interested in the East, our 
 own included. 
 
 The history of the " Eastern Question " is always 
 the same. It is always to the interest of one or 
 two of the European Powers to support Turkey 
 against the rest ; and thus the Porte subsists on the 
 divisions among the Christians. For a long time it 
 was thought conducive to "British interests" to 
 support Turkey, and we did so consistently and 
 
 1 Known as the greatest " eater " (i.f., of bribes) in Turkey. 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 153 
 
 persistently. At the present time it is the interest 
 of Russia and Germany to support Turkey : Russia 
 knows that the Sultan has for many years been 
 steadily undermining British influence in Turkey, 
 Germany finds that it gains many advantages 
 from the informal alliance. The " Confederacy 
 of Europe," while pretending to exist for the 
 maintenance of order in Turkey, works entirely 
 for the advantage of Germany and Russia, which 
 happen for the moment to be identical ; and 
 the form under which the whole is worked is that 
 the preservation of the " Concert " is the only way 
 of avoiding a European war. Undoubtedly, Russia 
 and Germany would not without war submit to any 
 action that they would regard as tending to re- 
 invigorate the waning moral power of Britain in 
 Turkey. The Armenian movement always aspired 
 towards the freedom of America and Britain, not 
 towards the autocracy of Russia ; and therefore 
 the Armenians must suffer. Russia has learned 
 that the educated Eastern Christians, even if freed 
 by her armies and bound by gratitude to her, as the 
 Bulgarians were, do not love her rule ; much less will 
 she permit that the Armenians should be saved in a 
 way that they would attribute to English support. 
 Now it is plain to every one who reads the official 
 correspondence with any understanding of the situ- 
 ation, that the proposed action on behalf of the 
 
154 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 Armenians was from the first always of such a 
 character as would be most certain to strengthen 
 Armenian gratitude towards England, and tend 
 to make the Armenian people a bar against the 
 development of Russian influence along the south 
 coast of the Black Sea. This is not a question 
 merely of the last two or three years ; it entered 
 on the present phase when a Liberal govern- 
 ment came into power in April, 1880, and pro- 
 ceeded to reverse our whole action in Turkey, 
 abandoning our strong position, and throwing away 
 our advantages. In order to shirk responsibility, 
 they began to hide behind the " Concert of Europe," 
 hoping that the other Powers would act with 
 them ; but the majority had everything to gain 
 by thwarting us, and they naturally declined to 
 play our game. Thus Britain gave Russia and 
 Turkey the opportunity which they were eager to 
 use, and opened the way for the great development 
 of German influence, which has been the most 
 striking feature in my experience of Turkish life. 
 British statesmen have had a very difficult part to 
 play in the last three years, since the question 
 reached its acutest stage, and they have played it 
 with uniform ill-success. But it is certain that 
 nothing is gained by keeping up the sham which is 
 at present maintained before our country ; and the 
 beginning of any better state of things in Turkey 
 
IN ASTATIC TURKEY 155 
 
 will not be made, till it comes to be a rule among 
 our rulers first to understand, and then to tell the 
 truth about, the Eastern bungle. I often have 
 wondered, in reading the utterances of officials in 
 both parties, whether the managers of our Eastern 
 policy are selected because of their skill in mis- 
 representing, or their power of misunderstanding, 
 Turkish affairs. Sometimes the one theory seems 
 more natural, sometimes the other. 
 
 It may be said for the former English policy 
 that, in general, it supported and encouraged the 
 best elements in Turkish life. It was too blind to 
 the inevitable predominance of the worst elements 
 in the government, and often too weak in checking 
 them, when it was not blind to them. But, except 
 in the one damning case of the Bulgarian mas- 
 sacres, no British Government deliberately and con- 
 sciously championed the worst side of Turkish 
 action ; and it must be allowed that those massacres 
 sprang more from the weakness of the Porte and 
 its utter inability to control the elemental forces of 
 barbarism within the Empire, than from any de- 
 liberate plan. Our statesmen had a vague belief 
 that Turkey might be reformed with care and time ; 
 and they hoped on with foolish, but well-meant, 
 credulity. But, at the present day, the European 
 Concert is supporting the worst elements in Turkey ; 
 and, perhaps, our co-operation in a policy which is 
 
156 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 planned for the benefit of Russia and Germany is 
 a just punishment for the crime of supporting the 
 Bulgarian massacres, and the duplicity of the 
 Cyprus Convention. 
 
 Will the Sultan's policy be successful ? Will the 
 revival of Mohammedanism be permanent in Asia 
 Minor ? So far as the centre and west is concerned, 
 it cannot be. The Moslems are dying out there. 
 Even where the Greeks have not begun to settle, 
 the Turks are diminishing in numbers owing 
 to conscription, misgovernment, and moral causes, 
 on which I will not enter, because I have avoided 
 studying or observing them. They have no 
 heart. They are in the grip of the railways, and 
 under the influence of Europe. In the eastern 
 regions it may be different for a time. The Mo- 
 hammedan revival has been far more carefully 
 propagated in those lands, and for the moment it 
 is successful by the usual Turkish method. As it 
 was in Scio in 1821 and in Syria in 1860, so it is 
 there at the present time, but on a vastly greater 
 scale, the signs of western spirit, western educa- 
 tion and aspirations after the elementary rights of 
 freedom alarmed the Turks, and they have set to 
 work, after long preparation and on a carefully 
 deliberated plan, to crush the hostile western spirit 
 by general and indiscriminate massacre. The 
 Armenians will in all probability be exterminated, 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 1 57 
 
 except the remnant that escapes to other lands. 
 There can be little doubt that about 200,000 of 
 them have been actually put to death by the Turks, 
 and I believe that fully four times as many have 
 either died of starvation and hardship, or have so 
 suffered from the unspeakable brutality to which 
 they have been subjected, that they can never again 
 be self-respecting men and women. 
 
 At present, in the western regions of Asia Minor, 
 the feeling is almost universal that the Moham- 
 medan revival in the east will, when it has done 
 its work there, be extended also to the west. The 
 Greeks are a far greater danger to the Turks than 
 the Armenians ever were. They have been less 
 submissive, more audacious, more inclined to re- 
 volt, more successful in asserting themselves against 
 the Turks. They will not long escape, when the 
 Armenians are exterminated and Orientalism is 
 once more supreme in the east, and they recognise 
 this ; and no rational man, who judges of others 
 from a fair point of view, can blame them if they 
 attempt to forestall the fate intended for them. 
 
 But even in the eastern parts of Asia Minor 
 the Oriental spirit is doomed. The Kurds will 
 massacre as many Armenians as the Porte wishes, 
 but they will never be good Mohammedans or 
 subjects of the Sultan, except in outward show. 
 It remains to be seen whether they are capable 
 
158 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 of being reduced to order by the stern discipline 
 of a western government ; they can never be con- 
 trolled by the Turkish officials, feeble in every- 
 thing except a massacre. Most of us, probably, 
 will live to see the boundary between European 
 and Asiatic rule placed near the Euphrates. 
 
 We shall wholly misconceive the present state of 
 things in Asia Minor, unless we bear in mind the 
 facts which have been stated in the preceding 
 paragraphs. The situation in Turkey is not simply 
 an uneasy balance between two opposite forces, 
 where a little extra strength added to one side by 
 the European Powers can restore equilibrium. 
 Orientalism is ebbing and dying in the country. 
 The tide of western ideas and western thoughts is 
 flowing and strong ; eight centuries of strict and 
 stern repression are behind it and drive it onward 
 irresistibly. The Great Powers of Europe, as they 
 feebly and nervelessly protest against the move- 
 ment towards freedom, and officially disown it, and 
 stand for the constituted authority and rights of 
 the Sultan, and reprobate the undue haste of 
 Armenians and Cretans and the Young Turkish 
 party to free themselves from the incubus that 
 crushes them, are in the position of Canute when 
 he set bounds to the flowing tide. The world, the 
 course of history, and the mind of man, are against 
 the Powers ; and there is nothing possible for them 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 159 
 
 in the long run except an ignominious retreat from 
 their position, amid the contempt and the re- 
 probation of mankind, whose feelings they are now 
 outraging. They are now abusing the resources of 
 civilised society and government, to support and prop 
 up the feeblest and most contemptible administration 
 by which barbarism and organised disorder ever 
 tried to stifle enlightenment and order. But they 
 cannot do more, they do not even pretend to do 
 more, than prolong its dying agonies a few months 
 or years ; they do not think, and they hardly plead 
 as an excuse, that they are lessening the inevitable 
 dangers of its dissolution by postponement ; some 
 of them, doubtless, know (as those of my acquaint- 
 ance, that are most familiar with the East, all feel) 
 that they are only increasing those dangers by 
 staving them off for the moment. They can drill 
 a good army for the Sultan, and Turks are very 
 good material for soldiers ; but they cannot put 
 permanent vitality into the Asiatic reaction. 
 
 The thing which they can and will succeed 
 in doing is that they destroy the moderate and 
 orderly element in the new movement ; for the 
 sober, intelligent, and reasonable men among the 
 Armenians, those who have borne the toil and 
 danger of patiently, quietly educating the people 
 in the ways of peace, are far most exposed to 
 massacre, and have been specially marked out in 
 
160 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 every case for the revenge of the brutal mob and 
 more brutal officials, while the harebrained revolu- 
 tionists, maddened by suspense and overhanging 
 fear of massacre, who seized the Ottoman Bank 
 in Constantinople, are the class which generally 
 escapes, and becomes more reckless and inflamed. 
 
 But we have spoken only of the six European 
 Powers. What about America ? As is stated on 
 pp. 222, 227, the factor that has been most potent 
 in producing the movement towards freedom has 
 been the American educational organisation. 
 What attitude does the American Government 
 assume towards this organisation, and towards the 
 Power which threatens and longs for and works for 
 its destruction ? Many Americans, unconnected 
 with the missionaries, whom I have met, have said 
 that the American Government was likely to have 
 great influence with the Porte, because it could be 
 trusted to have no designs in Turkey. Those who 
 spoke thus had always, as I found, been in com- 
 munication with the American Ministry at Con- 
 stantinople ; and their exact agreement in view 
 seemed to me to reflect the impression which they, 
 as strangers, derived from the official view held at 
 the Ministry. This view ignores entirely the whole 
 work of the missionaries ; and I am under the im- 
 pression that officials in America (who, of course, 
 reflect the ideas entertained at the Ministry in 
 
IN ASIATIC TURKEY l6l 
 
 Constantinople) are almost entirely ignorant of the 
 real character and power and guaranteed rights of 
 the American educational equipment in Turkey. 
 It may seem extraordinary that the great machinery 
 of colleges and schools which the missionaries have 
 created should be so completely ignored, as it is in 
 the very statement of this view ; but the official 
 mind has an extraordinary power of ignoring any- 
 thing that is not official, and the missionaries' 
 work, being a missionary and unselfish work, is 
 despised by many as of no account in practical 
 life. The Sultan's Government, however, is not 
 blind to it, and would gladly destroy it, and pull 
 down every college and school ; but a long series 
 of recognitions and authorisations from the three 
 Sultans stand in the way. The pretence that the 
 Porte may regard the American Government as 
 specially friendly, because their interests can never 
 conflict, is used as a means of managing the Minis- 
 ter ; and has always hitherto been entirely success- 
 ful. But, besides the missionary stumbling-block, 
 the Americans can offer no return to the Sultan ; 
 they could do him no service except to remove the 
 missionaries ; they cannot drill his armies, or give 
 him any of the practical aid and the moral support 
 that lies in the friendship of a commander of vast 
 armies in Europe, which the German Emperor can 
 
 give. And, as the Sultan has nothing to gain 
 
 II 
 
1 62 PAST AND PRESENT IN ASIATIC TURKEY. 
 
 from the Americans, he has never granted them 
 even one of the stones which they excavated at 
 Assos. 
 
 Much as the American politicians may dislike it, 
 there is no doubt that the interest and influence 
 among others of both English-speaking races are 
 closely connected. Zealously as the missionaries 
 have tried to be non-political, their work has told, 
 and must tell, strongly in favour of the free civilisa- 
 tion of the English-speaking races, and against the 
 bureaucratic civilisation of Russia or Germany. 
 American official influence can be great in Turkey 
 only when it is exerted on the side of freedom and 
 in maintenance of the rights of the existing Ameri- 
 can enterprises ; but for a time it has been di- 
 rected towards the other side, and consequently it 
 has been null. We can only wait and hope for 
 better counsels. 
 
 Russian policy has been clear and consistent 
 throughout ; and in agreement with Russia against 
 German influence in Turkey lies our only rational 
 course. But that course is not likely to be taken, 
 till Lord Salisbury has given place to a successor 
 (p. 144). 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS. 
 
 IT cannot be too emphatically stated that the evil 
 in Turkey does not arise from bad laws. The 
 laws. are, taking them as a whole, good, being as 
 a rule adapted by Mahmud or his successors from 
 the most approved European legislation. The 
 entire theory laid down by the reforming Sultans 
 as to the relations between the various religions 
 of the country is fair and generous. The whole 
 procedure that is prescribed in cases of conversion 
 to Mohammedanism from any other form of re- 
 ligion is judicious, moderate, and calculated to 
 distinguish between real and enforced conversion, 
 and to give the former co-religionists of the convert 
 every opportunity of satisfying themselves that the 
 conversion is voluntary. The evil lies in the ad-| 
 ministration of the laws. All the best part of the' 
 law, one might almost say the whole of the modern 
 law, is a dead letter, except where there happens 
 to be a vigorous and hard-working consul, familiar 
 with Eastern manners and language, backed by 
 an experienced and judicious ambassador, and 
 
 (163) 
 
164 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 actively supported by his home government ; and 
 where is that the case? Instances of it I have, 
 however, known, and the good achieved I have 
 seen for myself. 
 
 Among the Turkish officials, however, there 
 is, in the first place, rarely any desire to carry 
 out the law, any knowledge of what the law pro- 
 vides, or any wish to learn what are the provisions 
 of the law. The aim of the official in Turkey is not 
 to know and carry into effect the law. The exist- 
 ing practice would make it impossible for him to 
 execute it, and no one can say that he ought to try to 
 know what he cannot execute, especially as it would 
 mean ruin to himself. And, in the second place, 
 the salaries apportioned to officials are absurdly 
 small. I remember in one case the governor of a 
 district as large as Yorkshire had a salary of T. 70 
 per annum. Moreover, the salary is generally 
 hopelessly in arrears. Finally, the official has 
 often to pay in bribes, before he gets his appoint- 
 ment, much more than it is worth. In order to 
 live he must do as his neighbours do ; bribery is 
 the universal rule; everything everywhere moves 
 by bakshish, and without it nothing can be done. 
 The duty of an official is not to carry out the law, 
 but to meet the expenses of life. He has his 
 appointment ; he knows that it won't last long, for 
 changes are frequent, and he must make the 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 165 
 
 best of his time. Everybody knows what the 
 system is ; no one expects him to do otherwise ; 
 nobody blames him for doing as all know that they 
 would do in the same circumstances. It is difficult 
 to see what improvement is possible until there is 
 a reform at the heart. 
 
 Moreover, the Turk is not naturally a good 
 officer or a good official. In the first place he is 
 indolent, and incapable of voluntarily undertaking 
 the active life of a vigorous officer. The idea is 
 deep in his nature that the object of life is to make 
 money in order that he may sit still the whole day 
 long. Why be an official and a great man, if he 
 has to work as hard as a poor man ? He is 
 capable of making an exertion under the stimulus 
 of poverty ; and I have it on the best authority 
 that a set of Turkish navvies are second to none 
 as good and useful workmen (but doubtless this 
 excellence depends on the tact of the organising 
 superintendent). He makes an excellent soldier, 
 hardy, well-behaved under discipline, who can be 
 trusted to fight till he is cut to pieces, both behind 
 fortified lines and in the open field ; but he must 
 have officers to lead him, and he seems hardly ever 
 capable of taking on education enough for an officer. 
 When the stimulus of compulsion from above is 
 removed, he sits down, and lets things slide. Even 
 among a set of workmen you must employ over- 
 
166 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 seers of a different race ; the same Turk who is 
 excellent as a workman is useless as an overseer, 
 while you will get lots of Greeks who make useful 
 overseers but bad manual labourers. The hewers 
 of wood, the carriers of stones, and that class of 
 workmen in general on the railways are Turks (so 
 far as my experience goes), but the employees of 
 higher class are to a large extent Greeks. It is 
 difficult, perhaps impossible, to educate the Turk ; 
 but there are so many sterling qualities in him, 
 that I have a profound conviction that he can be 
 amalgamated with other elements to form a good 
 mixed race. 
 
 As an official, then, the Turk is dependent on 
 educated help to enable him to perform his duties : 
 usually he does not trouble to read for himself 
 papers presented to him, but has them read to him : J 
 often one has a strong suspicion, sometimes positive 
 certainty, that reading would be so difficult to the 
 official that he cannot trust himself to get the 
 meaning of the document. My experience is that 
 any Turkish official, who can read documents with 
 ease and understanding, makes a point of doing so 
 in public, in order to impress his inferior officers 
 and the general population. You will occasionally 
 be told, as a matter worth note, that such and such 
 
 1 I speak only of what I have seen, which is chiefly in the 
 inner country, not in Stambol or Smyrna. 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 167 
 
 an official can read any paper presented to him ; 
 and the reputation produces so much effect on 
 everybody, that it must be rare. The Turks cannot 
 go through the elementary and indispensable 
 routine of government without the aid of a great 
 number of Christian subalterns. That has always 
 been the case ; they have always found plenty of 
 Armenians and Phanariote Greeks to serve them in 
 this capacity ; and the most tyrannous and oppres- 
 sive officials in grinding into the dust the Bosnian 
 and Herzegovinian Christians were these Greeks 
 (as Mr. Arthur Evans, 1 a staunch champion of the 
 Christians of Turkey, emphatically states). It is 
 said that the present Sultan, when he came into 
 power, began by attempting to make a clean sweep 
 of all Armenian employees in government service. 2 
 Success was of course impossible, for Turkish 
 officials to take their place could not be found ; 
 and hence the Sultan was able recently (as the 
 newspapers mentioned) to retort on those who ac- 
 cused him of hating the Armenians, that he had in 
 his official service in Stambol so many hundreds 
 of Armenians. 
 
 But it is useless to import a cartload of good 
 laws into a country, if no provision is made to 
 
 1 Through Bosnia and Herzegovina, p. 257. 
 
 2 See Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, in North American Review, Sept., 
 1896, p. 280. 
 
168 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 train a set of officials, competent to carry them 
 into effect. No machinery exists sufficient to train 
 the officials, or to ensure that a class exists educated 
 enough to appreciate a complicated system of law 
 and the complicated procedure needed to give 
 effect to it. I have known a few vigorous and 
 intelligent officials in Turkey, but as a rule their 
 activity was directed to carry out a plain and simple 
 style of administration of the semi-patriarchal type, 
 where a rough sense of justice took the place of 
 knowledge of the law, and filled that place quite 
 satisfactorily amid a simple and elementary form 
 of society. Why then the question is sure to be 
 put is it said that good officials cannot be made 
 out of Turks ? Is not my experience sufficient to 
 show that active and intelligent officials do exist 
 among them, and can be found and trained when 
 wanted ? But in most cases where I have found 
 such an official, I have also been told that he was 
 not a Turk, but an Albanian, or occasionally a 
 Circassian, or so on. The very Turks who were 
 my informants themselves recognised the strange- 
 ness of active business-like character in a Turk, and 
 unasked explained the reason. 
 
 The want of proper training for boys already 
 spoken of, 1 is apparent, when the attempt is made 
 to train the young men into officers. Leave an 
 1 See pp. 43, 49, 270. 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 169 
 
 English boy to grow up among servants and 
 grooms and lackeys (even though these are highly 
 educated men compared to the great mass of Turks), 
 without giving him any proper intellectual or 
 moral education, and the result would be unpromis- 
 ing. Some attempt was made by the reforming 
 Sultans to create a system of schools ; but, like 
 everything Turkish, the thing has been a failure. 
 
 Reform and improvement, in short, are quite 
 possible in Turkey, but not under Turkish rule. 
 As the author of AnadoL said of the Ottoman 
 Government, " bodies politic, like those of men, 
 require a certain degree of soul to keep them from 
 becoming carrion ; to save the expense of salt, as 
 old Ben Jonson says ". The longer you travel in 
 Turkey, the more profoundly do you become con- 
 vinced, like the traveller from whom I quote, that 
 the administration is devoid of the requisite " degree 
 of soul ". As Hamilton puts it, " every one must 
 feel that the Turks themselves are as yet incapable 
 of that high moral energy and perseverance in the 
 path of duty, which are essential to the accomplish- 
 ment of any moral or political regeneration " 
 (Researches, i., p. 355). 
 
 The mingled hatred and fear with which the I 
 Turkish peasantry regard the officials of the govern- 1 
 ment is more deep seated and far reaching in its' 
 effects than one would readily believe. On one 
 
I/O GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 occasion in 1890, when the only possible means of 
 getting photographs and impressions of an im- 
 portant " Hittite " relief with inscription at Bor 
 (which I have long been in pursuit of) was to 
 purchase it, and present it to the Imperial Museum 
 in Constantinople, lodging it for the moment under 
 the care of the government, this act proved after- 
 wards a serious impediment to our chances of 
 further discovery. Having once been guilty of 
 trafficking with government, by giving to it what 
 we had purchased from a too confiding private 
 vendor, we had made ourselves agents of the 
 officials, and (as I doubt not) had become the 
 means whereby the previous owner lost both the 
 stone and the price. Parts of the tale have been 
 told in his own effective style by my friend, the 
 " Wandering Scholar " (see his p. 14 ff.), and I 
 need not here retell it more fully ; but there are 
 some gaps in his narrative which his literary skill 
 disguises ; and, as an unintended result, there re- 
 mains in the reader's mind an erroneous conception, 
 that the distrust entertained by every one for 
 government agents was a mere freak of ignorant 
 bigotry. It was the experience of many years 
 which produced that distrust. In ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, as soon as it came to the knowledge 
 of government that the Greek woman from whom 
 we bought the stone had received twenty pounds 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS I/ 1 
 
 for it, an agent would visit her and extort from her 
 the largest part of the money ; and she might be 
 thankful, if by sacrificing the part voluntarily she 
 could purchase leave to keep the remainder. There 
 have been many cases in which, on the bare sus- 
 picion of having come into possession of money, 
 people have been subjected to imprisonment and 
 torture from sheer inability to pay up more than 
 they really had received. 
 
 Whether the Greek woman actually had to pay 
 hush money to the officials I am not in a position 
 to state positively, but I thought so soon after, 
 and still think so. And if she got off easily and 
 cheaply, what was the reason ? It was simply that 
 fear of European opinion has greatly weakened the 
 once heavy hand of the Turk in the western and 
 central parts of Asiatic Turkey. The sympathy 
 that unites all the Greeks in self-defence has given 
 them comparative safety, and makes an official 
 slow to rouse them and fairly easy to bribe. 
 
 Not that it has been only the Christians who 
 suffered in this way. Far from it ; and I take the 
 proof from this same incident. The "Wandering 
 Scholar" was led secretly and at midnight by 
 devious ways into a garden which he knew not, 
 where the precious second half of the relief was 
 offered him by a man whose name he did not learn, 
 and whom he had never seen, provided that "he 
 
1/2 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 pledged himself solemnly to have no dealings with 
 the government in the matter ". That man, who 
 was so eager to get rid of " this dangerous thing, 
 which robbed him of sleep," was himself a Turk, 1 
 belonging to the richest private family in the dis- 
 trict. But he was even more distrustful of the 
 government than the Greeks had been. Either the 
 Greeks had been emboldened formerly by the 
 banded support which all Greeks give one another, 
 whereas Turks never aid any one, but accept the 
 decrees of God and the stroke of fate unresistingly, 
 or the owner of the second half of the relief had 
 been warned by the fate of the Greek owner of the 
 first half. 
 
 The longest chapter of this book might be de- 
 voted to giving examples of the oppressive and 
 blind way in which government is administered. 
 But every traveller who has been long enough in 
 Turkey to acquire any knowledge of its ways, is 
 
 1 1 think I mentioned his name in a letter in the Athen&um at 
 the time. I spent a night in the house of his brother (who is 
 described above, p. 22) at Tyana, and heard from him of the 
 stone in his brother's possession. Being compelled to hurry away 
 to catch the steamer at Mersina, I could not accept his invitation 
 to go with him next morning to see the stone. The " Wandering 
 Scholar " had arranged to meet me the following evening near 
 the Cilician Gates, and I intended to instruct him how to reach 
 the stone (which was a delicate matter), but he was prevented 
 from completing the journey in time, and I could only leave a 
 brief message and hurry on. 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 full of them ; and the inquiring reader may find 
 some good and characteristic stories in Mr. Barkley's 
 Ride through Asia Minor. The point which I wish 
 to emphasise is that, previous to the recent mas- 
 sacres, and excluding what may be called " the 
 black country" (in which the Armenians have 
 been long exposed to continual suffering from the 
 Kurds), it was the Mohammedan peasantry who on 
 the whole seemed to me to suffer most from the 
 perversity and iniquity of government. The Chris- 
 tians, even in the villages (I speak here only of 
 Central and Western Anatolia) were richer and 
 cleverer than the Mohammedans ; and they could 
 better avail themselves of those ways by which 
 matters can be made easy with the officials. One 
 who lives much among the Moslem peasantry, 
 and sympathises with them, as I have done, comes 
 to hate the Ottoman government with that fervent 
 hatred which I feel. 
 
 The subordinate agents of the government, who 
 come most in contact with the peasant population, 
 are the Zaptiehs or gens d'armes. I have not the 
 knowledge requisite to give an accurate, complete 
 account of the character of these Turkish police ; 
 and it is not the aim of this little book to do more 
 than set forth the impression made on me by what 
 I have seen and heard. The action of the Zaptiehs, 
 of course, varies according to the character of the 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 governor ; and in Turkey there have been in my 
 experience some good governors, such as Ingleez 
 Said in Konia, kept there for many years in an 
 honourable sort of exile, Abeddin Pasha, and 
 various others. The influence of these men kept 
 their provinces in a much better condition than 
 the average ; and Said's officials were positively 
 paid their salaries regularly, or at least it was so 
 represented to him. But it was also formally re- 
 ported to him that the great road through the 
 Cilician Gates was finished to the extreme limit 
 of his government j 1 and I can certify that all the 
 easy parts of the road were finished properly, only 
 some of the bridges were unbuilt, so that the 
 causeway could not be used for a stretch of miles, 
 and the most difficult part of the road within the 
 Konia government had been left in its natural 
 condition, on the principle that it was too bad to 
 improve. It is true that the light country waggon 
 (araba) could be driven over the whole road ; but 
 the " Wandering Scholar " and I (who have taken 
 a waggon up the ridge of Anti-Taurus, where no 
 path had ever gone, and lowered it by a rope 
 down the other side) don't think that that implies 
 a very high character for the road. Even Said 
 Pasha, then, could not do everything ; but he did 
 
 1 Conversing with us in 1882, he spoke with some pride of 
 having completed this road up to the limit of his authority. 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 1/5 
 
 a good deal, and his Zaptiehs were not the average 
 Turkish policemen. 
 
 But I want to show what the peasants think 
 about the Zaptiehs^ and to give some examples of 
 the reason why they think as they do. Your 
 average Zaptieh gets no pay, for his nominal salary 
 (like that of most officials, especially the humbler 
 class) is so hopelessly in arrears that we may fairly 
 say he gets none. Even a Zaptieh must live and 
 support his family, and in the country districts he 
 must provide and keep his horse. His country is 
 bound to do that ; and as she does not do it in 
 the regular way, he must make his livelihood out 
 of the peasantry in irregular fashion. He lives, of 
 course, free, and behaves as a sufficiently brutal 
 lord and master wherever he goes among the 
 peaceful and submissive Turks, though he finds 
 it wise to keep a quieter tongue in his head when 
 he has to go among Circassians or Kurds or 
 Avshahrs. He has the task of communicating 
 orders from the government to the villages, where 
 the headman receives the instructions. If the 
 taxes are not paid, the Zaptiehs have to inquire 
 the reason why, and make the headman recognise 
 the necessities of the case ; and the archaeologist, 
 as he sits in the Oda, may, if he likes, hear many 
 a tale of oppression and cruelty. 
 
 To our sophisticated Western minds, a police- 
 
176 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 man is a symbol of law, and his chief duty is to 
 arrest and imprison the criminal, and protect the 
 industrious citizen. A Zaptietis view is very 
 different. If a crime has been committed, his 
 business is to wink at the criminal, to arrest the 
 neighbours in succession, and to put them in prison, 
 until they have made it worth his while to let them 
 out. If he arrested the criminal, his trade would 
 be ruined. In a large town, where I have been a 
 good deal, a murder was committed some years 
 ago : an elderly Turk was found dead in his own 
 house. Everybody knew who was the murderer. 
 It was the Turk's own son-in-law, who was tired of 
 waiting for his death to enter on the inheritance of 
 his wife. The old man's head had been cut off, 
 which was a sure proof that a Turkish hand had 
 been at work. The Turk, when he kills, always 
 cuts off the head : even the fowl for your archae- 
 ologist's soup is slaughtered by decapitation. On 
 the contrary, the Greek race has never been given 
 to mutilation of the human form ; it is true that the 
 Smyrniote blackguards are much addicted to the 
 use of the knife, and murders are frequent among 
 them ; but they are satisfied with simple murder, 
 and leave the corpse entire. But in this case most 
 of the Greeks in the neighbourhood were arrested, 
 imprisoned, and set free in the usual style; and, 
 when I passed that way four months after the 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 177 
 
 murder, not a Turk had yet been arrested, while the 
 well-known culprit was enjoying his inheritance. 
 After all, what difference did it make? There 
 are no habitual criminals in Turkey, and no 
 criminal class. The same man is a respectable 
 tradesman one day, and has taken to the hills the 
 next to return to his trade after a decent interval. 
 The Turk in this case had no other father-in-law, 
 and was not likely to commit another murder. 
 Why should your Zaptieh trouble him about this 
 one peccadillo ? 
 
 Whatever be the case in the best administered 
 districts and among individuals, the fact is that the 
 Zaptiehs are associated in the minds of the people 
 generally with every act of oppression and extortion 
 that takes place. If you ask about any act of 
 brigandage on the great trade road between Angora 
 and Constantinople (I speak of days before the 
 railway ran to Angora), you will hear that it was 
 all arranged in collusion with the authorities, and 
 the Zaptiehs who acted as intermediaries will pro- 
 bably be named. If you inquire into the ante- 
 cedents of the redoubtable Osman, who was keeping 
 the Konia country* lively for some years before 
 1890, a tale of hard and unfair treatment will be 
 unfolded to you, in which Osman is the suffering 
 hero and Zaptiehs the tormentors. If you get your 
 servant, e.g., one whom I employed in 1887, a tall, 
 
 12 
 
17B GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 thin, cadaverous-looking Turk, to tell you the 
 history of his eleven years' imprisonment, he 
 connects all his sufferings, beginning with his 
 unjust arrest in his seventeenth year, with the 
 Zaptiehs ; and he declares that the Zaptiehs took 
 bribes from the real culprit to charge the crime on 
 an innocent powerless poor man. If you hear one 
 of the American missionaries give evidence of the 
 way in which the headman of an Armenian village, 
 which had been raided and looted by Kurds, was 
 tortured to death in his own house for declaring 
 his inability to raise the usual amount of tax, and 
 persisting after due warning in this rebellious 
 declaration, it was the Zaptiehs who put a chain 
 round his waist, passed it over a beam in the roof, 
 and hauled the wretched man up and let him down 
 again, until the chain cut into him, and he died of 
 the treatment. In the country districts, when you 
 hear of ill-will between the Christian villages and 
 the Moslem, it is rarely, if ever, so far as my ex- 
 perience goes, a direct hatred against the hostile 
 village : it is mediated through the Zaptiehs or even 
 still higher officials, who are declared on the one 
 side to take bribes from the wealthier Christians 
 and let them off their fair taxation, and on the 
 other side to allow the Moslem villages, from 
 religious partiality, to be a year or two in arrears. 
 I do not give these instances as being either all 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 179 
 
 verified truth, 1 or as a complete and fair judgment ; 
 but every one of them embodies a statement which 
 I have listened to and sympathised with ; I could 
 quote many more stories of similar type; I cannot 
 quote a single testimony, or observation on my own 
 part, of good feeling and kindly relations between 
 villagers and Zaptiehs. I have found everywhere 
 and among all kinds of the Anatolian people and 
 all religions the same belief that the police of 
 Turkey are the centre and agents of disorder, mis- 
 government, and injustice. 
 
 That being the case, whether rightly or wrongly, 
 what was likely to be the effect of the orders issued 
 in Crete by the six Great Powers orders (in Lord 
 Salisbury's own words) that, after the Greek troops 
 were required to retire, the Turkish troops should 
 for the present be retained to police the island 
 under the proposed system of autonomy? 
 
 To keep up Turkish police was to destroy any 
 chance of the proffered autonomy being accepted, 
 for it was received as an intimation that the worst 
 evils were to be maintained and supported by the 
 Great Powers. Every man who knows Turkey 
 recognised that the retention of the Turks as police 
 was either an absurdity, the result of ignorance, 
 
 1 Except when it comes from an American missionary or a 
 consul ; but of them there are so many, that the rest are not 
 needed to strengthen the case. 
 
ISO GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 which destroyed any benefit in the other arrange- 
 ments, or an intentional device to maintain the 
 Sultan's authority in spite of illusory promises made 
 to hoodwink the Greeks. While it would, beyond 
 a doubt, have been the duty of the Greek govern- 
 ment and troops to accept the autonomy professedly 
 offered by the Great Powers and to retire, if the 
 Turkish troops had all been obliged to evacuate the 
 island (either immediately or before some definite 
 day), and only European soldiers and sailors em- 
 ployed to keep order, it was equally their duty to 
 persist and to fight to the end, so long as Turkish 
 soldiers remained in the island. To withdraw and 
 leave the Turks as guardians of order would have 
 been to advertise themselves as either braggart 
 cowards, who had begun a work and stopped when 
 they found it to be dangerous, or fools who, after 
 centuries of experience, could still accept an assur- 
 ance that the Turks would maintain peace and 
 order. It is a reasonable view to hold that the 
 Greeks should not have gone into Crete at all; and 
 I am not prepared to hold that it was wise, nor 
 would I have said one word to encourage them, if 
 I had been in a position to speak, knowing their 
 weakness and want of preparation and M. Deli- 
 yanni's ridiculous incompetence. But it is an 
 irrational thing to maintain that they ought to have 
 retired, when autonomy and Turkish police were 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS l8l 
 
 offered. After once going there, it was inconsis- 
 tent with self-respect to withdraw, until something 
 more than absurdity or cheat was proffered them. 
 
 Personally, I have no reason to dislike the Zap- 
 tiehs. To myself, certainly, they were always 
 most obedient, respectful, and obliging ; several of 
 them were intelligent and really useful, and all 
 were willing and zealous ; but I had the power 
 of the purse, and they all knew my reputation as 
 paying well for services, and paying nothing but 
 hard words or worse for idleness and failure. But, 
 as a rule, I avoided employing Zaptiehs, and rarely 
 took them, except when they were pressed upon 
 me by Pashas and other high officials. They were, 
 of course, intended to be spies and checks upon 
 me ; but that was not the reason why it was best 
 to avoid them, for I had no wish to do anything 
 illegal and nothing to conceal ; while, as to vexa- 
 tious interference, a judicious hint at the beginning 
 about bakshish arranges such matters easily in 
 Turkey. The real objection to the presence of a 
 Zaptieh was that he was distrusted and suspected 
 by the villagers, and was therefore an impediment 
 to discovery ; and in several cases I knew, and in 
 others thought, that payment made to villagers for 
 showing inscriptions was seized by a Zaptieh^ or 
 at least a heavy percentage was levied by him on it. 
 
 It is familiar to every resident in Smyrna that, 
 
1 82 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 when some serious crime rouses public indignation, 
 private citizens must track it out and insist on 
 punishment, if anything is to be done. For example, 
 about eighteen years ago, two Montenegrins, who had 
 been dismissed from the service of a Levantine family 
 residing near Smyrna, in revenge for the slight put 
 upon them, attacked the house by night, murdered 
 one member of the family, and left three others 
 lying half dead. If the matter had been left to 
 the officials, many arrests would have been made ; 
 but the Montenegrins would probably have lived on 
 unharmed. The European community, however, 
 resolved that such a deed should not pass un- 
 punished. Every one knew who the murderers 
 were ; but they had to be found, and they had to 
 be arrested. Now Montenegrins are always men 
 of great courage and personal strength ; and to 
 arrest two desperate, well-armed, powerful men is 
 no easy matter. They were followed up and 
 caught by the man, whose name rises to the lips 
 of every person in the whole country round, not 
 English only, but of many nationalities, when any 
 action is required for the public welfare, demanding 
 courage, coolness, and knowledge of the country 
 Mr. Richard Whittall in whose office the murdered 
 man had been a clerk. Taking with him a single 
 Turkish servant, he tracked them to a room in 
 Smyrna, and delivered them over to the police. 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 183 
 
 They were tried and found guilty ; and it was, I 
 think, finally arranged that they met their death at 
 the hands of justice not an easy thing to accom- 
 plish in Turkey. 
 
 As to the matter of public order, things vary 
 much. The trade roads are often unsafe, and the 
 western coast lands are generally more or less 
 infested by brigands. Wherever there is any 
 money to be picked up by robbing or brigandage, 
 that trade is well kept up. But over a considerable 
 part of the central country, poverty is so universal, 
 that there is hardly anything for a robber to live 
 by, and his trade languishes. You hear many 
 stories of robbers and loose characters about the 
 country, as you wander, and on rare occasions you 
 learn that the head of a robber is exposed at the 
 Konak (government house) of a city. I have 
 occasionally met a set of Zaptiehs, who were out 
 in pursuit of a band of robbers ; but the only thing 
 they sometimes succeed in doing is to arrest and 
 imprison the family of a man they are in search of. 
 For example, in 1884, we were told of a band 
 consisting of three Circassians and two Yuruks, 
 who were roaming the Phrygian mountains, and 
 defying the police. One day, we met half a dozen 
 Zaptiehs, and were informed that they had seized 
 the whole family of one of the two Yuruks, and 
 sent them in charge to Kutaya. 
 
184 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 As a general rule you need not pay any attention 
 to reports of this kind. The only logical conclusion, 
 if you paid any attention, would be that you should 
 go away from the district. But such parties rarely 
 molest Europeans ; and you may feel comparatively 
 safe if you do not neglect the ordinary dictates of 
 prudence. I heard of one party on an excursion 
 who were riding in several waggons. They had to 
 ascend a long slope, up which the horses walked ; 
 and, as is usual in such cases, the waggons became 
 separated by considerable intervals. Each waggon, 
 on reaching the top, instead of waiting for the 
 stragglers to close up, dashed down the hill at a 
 rapid pace, and widened the interval still more. 
 Some Circassians on the lookout waited until the 
 last waggon came up to the top of the hill separated 
 by a long distance from the rest, overturned it by 
 the roadside, stripped the inmates of everything 
 they possessed worth taking, and left them free to 
 make up on their flying predecessors and tell their 
 experiences. A party should never travel in this 
 straggling order ; but it is hardly conceivable 
 how difficult it is to induce undisciplined and 
 careless travellers to observe this elementary rule. 
 
 I was also told of another case in which a Euro- 
 pean and his servant, sleeping under a tree, were 
 murdered and robbed by some Circassians. 
 
 On two occasions when we had been camping 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 185 
 
 for some days in the open country, report or the 
 suspicious appearance and questions of a Circassian 
 made me think it prudent to flit at a moment's 
 notice to a village. And, as a general rule, one 
 should not stay for more than one night in any 
 place except a village, though I must plead guilty 
 to having several times violated this rule. For a 
 single night, except with bad luck, you are not 
 likely to see or be seen by any one, if you camp out 
 in the open country. 
 
 It is also a principle not to be too open in telling 
 your plans of travel, especially when you are 
 travelling in a small party. You naturally ques- 
 tion everybody about the roads, the course of the 
 water, the distance of various towns, the list of 
 villages on the way to them, and so on. As you 
 will yourself see the road which you intend to 
 travel, you need not ask much about it ; and the 
 natives conclude that you are going any way 
 except the road about which you show no curiosity. 
 When you meet a small party of riders you should 
 not ask them the distance and direction of the 
 place to which you are going, but be vague and 
 general in your conversation, otherwise you may 
 regret it. 
 
 Though I have often heard reports about lurk- 
 ing dangers, I never actually found myself in an 
 obviously dangerous position, except perhaps on 
 
1 86 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS . 
 
 the following occasion, and even that is a matter 
 of circumstantial evidence and therefore uncertain. 
 In August, 1883, I was going across the great 
 treeless plain which stretches west and south from 
 the upper Sangarios : with me there was one 
 Bosniak Turk, Murad. We were due to reach a 
 bridge over the river Sangarios after a two hours' 
 ride ; but at the end of two hours we seemed 
 as far away as ever from the river, and had evi- 
 dently missed our road. At this moment, over 
 the brow of a low slope in front of us appeared 
 three mounted Circassians. I felt much relieved, 
 as Circassians have always wonderful knowledge 
 of country and direction ; but, to my annoyance, 
 Murad, who was about ten yards in front, did not 
 stop to ask them the way. I was on the point of 
 stopping myself, but by some chance or caprice, 
 did not do so. I quickened my pace and asked 
 Murad why he had not asked the way, as we were 
 obviously wrong. He said, " These men are 
 robbers ". As I knew the feeling that all Turks 
 entertain towards Circassians, I ridiculed the idea ; 
 but he pointed back over his shoulder, declaring 
 that Circassians had no business here, more than 
 fourteen hours from their nearest village ; and as 
 I glanced back I saw that they were standing, 
 turning towards us and talking. At this moment 
 we crossed the brow of the slope, passed out of 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS l8/ 
 
 their sight, and came on a solitary threshing floor, 
 where a number of men and women were gathering 
 in the produce of some fields. They told us they 
 belonged to a village at the bridge towards which 
 we were bound, that we were going in the wrong 
 direction, and must turn sharp off to the left, />., the 
 north, in order to reach the bridge, which was full 
 two hours distant. We went according to their 
 directions ; and, as Murad expressed great un- 
 easiness about the Circassians, and we were so late, 
 we quickened our pace, and went as fast as his 
 horse, a very poor one, could be made to go. We 
 came to several forks in the road, and made a shot 
 at hazard as to the proper path. About fifty 
 minutes had passed when Murad said, " There 
 are the Circassians ". Sure enough the same 
 three men were visible, not a very great distance 
 away, and riding rapidly towards us. They were 
 now on the opposite side. We had left them riding 
 away from us towards the west, but they were now 
 coming up towards us from the south-east. The 
 only possible explanation seemed to be that they, 
 knowing about the threshing floor and not venturing 
 to turn back after us past the people there, had made 
 a circuit by the south, intending to attack us on the 
 other side of the threshing floor out of sight of the 
 people. Our sudden turn away on a new road had 
 disconcerted them ; and they had lost some time, 
 
1 88 GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 
 
 before they found out where we had gone. Natur- 
 ally we did our best to get on; but they were much 
 better mounted, and gained on us rapidly. My 
 only weapons were sundry surveying instruments. 
 Murad had an American breech-loading hunting 
 rifle, with a delicate fixed sight, not intended to 
 shoot beyond 200 yards, but deadly up to that 
 range. But he was not a practised shot : in fact, 
 Turks as a rule are bad shots ; and he was obviously 
 so excited, that it was doubtful if he could have hit 
 a haystack. I resolve'd that, if I got out of this 
 business, I should learn to use a rifle. Two of the 
 Circassians, as I noticed in passing, had only old 
 flint-lock guns, and the third one of the common 
 muzzle-loading, double-barrelled fowling pieces, 
 which are sold all over Turkey very cheap, and 
 generally very bad, of Belgian make; but all three 
 had large revolvers, and the usual armoury of 
 weapons at their waists. Had Prof. Sterrett, to 
 whom our rifle belonged, been with us, we should 
 have been easier, as he was a dead shot and not 
 given to excitement ; but we could only hope that 
 the Circassians were the victims of deceitful appear- 
 ance, and that the bridge was near. Just at that 
 moment the bridge appeared to our longing eyes ; 
 the Circassians stopped short about 200 yards be- 
 hind us ; and we saw them no more. But at the 
 bridge the villagers said that the three had been 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIALS 189 
 
 prowling about the neighbourhood for a week, and 
 had lifted a few things here and there. This was 
 the nearest approach I ever had to an inter- 
 view with robbers ; and, after all, as I said before, 
 there is only uncertain circumstantial evidence 
 against our Circassian friends. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ARMENIANS. 
 
 THROUGHOUT my whole experience of Turkey, the 
 impression I have gained about the Armenians, 
 and the accounts I have heard of them on many 
 occasions from hundreds of persons with whom 
 I have conversed, men of the most diverse situa- 
 tions, sympathies, and religions, agree in re- 
 gard to the general character towards which the 
 Armenians tend, and specially as regards their 
 faults. There is less agreement about their virtues. 
 Some, who have merely come in superficial con- 
 tact with the worst class of Armenians rich and 
 tyrannical, ignorant and grasping, tradesmen who 
 have made money in narrow, sordid business in 
 towns deny that they have any virtues at all. But 
 all agree that the Armenians tend towards one 
 type, submissive to the verge of servility, accepting 
 without attempting to resist ill treatment and in- 
 sult at which a worm would rebel. Looking through 
 the travellers that have visited Asia Minor, one 
 sees everywhere the same account, with one single 
 
 exception. Mr. Barkley, in his Ride through Asia 
 (190) 
 
THE ARMENIANS IQI 
 
 Minor, p. 87, expresses in the words of an Ar- 
 menian at Sivri-Hissar, his own opinion and that 
 of almost all the rest : " The Armenians get on 
 well with the Turks. We are not like Bulgars and 
 other Christians. When the Turk robs us, we see 
 nothing ; when he thrashes us, we say nothing ; 
 and so we have peace." 
 
 The author of Anadol, the Last Home of the 
 Faithful, describing a journey in Asia Minor in 
 1852, says: "More simple and abject than the 
 ambidextrous and vainglorious Greek, possessing 
 sounder sense if not so much vivacity, and, above 
 all, less imbued with national pride and ambition, 
 the supple and self-interested Armenian humbles 
 his brow in the dust of the lordly, pride-sowing, 
 and poverty-reaping Moslem, and, unfeared, be- 
 comes the master of his master's all ". His ob- 
 servations are remarkably acute, and in several 
 respects singularly prophetic. He saw clearly the 
 faults of the Armenian character, but was not, as 
 so many travellers have been, blind to the promise 
 that lay concealed beneath the surface. His ex- 
 periences are well worth reading and studying ; 
 and history justifies the concluding words of his 
 general sketch of their character : " Is not their 
 state a subject fraught with promise, calling for 
 inquiry, and worthy of a prying traveller's closest 
 scrutiny? " 
 
THE ARMENIANS 
 
 The sole exception to this unanimity of obser- 
 vation is in the pages of my friend, the " Wander- 
 ing Scholar," who speaks of the Armenian's <( in- 
 effaceable nationalism, his passion for plotting and 
 his fanatical intolerance ". He declares that "there 
 are few Armenians who have not committed 
 technical treason by becoming members of such 
 societies 1 at some period of their lives". He 
 speaks of the " Kurd behind the Armenian, and 
 the Russian behind the Kurd," or, again, of the 
 Kurd as " now cutting an Armenian's throat, now 
 leaguing with him in a war on a hostile tribe," 
 giving his readers in the west the impression that 
 the Kurds and Armenians are two sets of unruly 
 and quarrelsome barbarians, atone moment bicker- 
 ing with one another, at another uniting in hatred 
 of common enemies (such as the Turks, the 
 western reader naturally infers from the whole 
 tone of the passage, though that is not actually 
 stated in brief, quotable assertion). 
 
 It was not easy for me to see how the " Wander- 
 ing Scholar" reached a view so diametrically 
 opposed to all I have seen or heard or read ; and 
 yet I know that he judges here from what he saw 
 and what he heard. In the following pages I 
 shall try to bring out the facts, contemplation of 
 
 1 Viz., " Armenian secret societies," mentioned in the previous 
 line. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 193 
 
 which prompted his judgment, and to show their 
 relation to the facts on which most people judge. 
 He has seen one side of Armenian life which few 
 have seen or believed to exist the independent, 
 warlike Armenian and I personally am in- 
 debted to him for the knowledge of this side, with- 
 out which I should not easily have reached the 
 conception that I entertain of Armenian character ; 
 but he has, in my opinion, given far too much 
 prominence to a certain small number of facts 
 (correctly apprehended in themselves), and unduly 
 minimised or wholly omitted others, in the picture 
 that he draws in his usual vigorous and striking 
 style. When, however, he says that there are few 
 Armenians who have not been members of some 
 treasonable secret society, I must confess that this 
 statement seems to me one of the occasional slips 
 he has allowed himself to fall into : as when on p. 
 40 he heard the "shooting of bolts" on the doors 
 of the huts of Yuruk nomads (such inventions are 
 far too civilised and elaborate for Yuruks, or even 
 for a Turkish village), or when on p. 15 he describes 
 how the lady of Bor spread her petticoats over a 
 Hittite relief to hide it from our longing eyes (the 
 lady's dress would be more correctly described as a 
 divided skirt). If such misuse of a name occurred 
 in one of the historical books of the New Testament, 
 it would be pitched upon by the critics as a con- 
 
 13 
 
194 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 elusive proof that the book in which it occurred 
 was a late forgery ; but I am able to certify that the 
 ' ' Wandering Scholar" saw the scene at Bor, and 
 describes it with the sure touch of an eye-witness 
 and with a keen eye for the picturesque and the 
 comic details, but with one slip in regard to dress. 
 
 I would not have directed attention to what I 
 believe to be the incorrectness of his statement as to 
 the Armenians and the secret societies, were it not 
 that the judgment which I have quoted has been 
 used in evidence, as entirely correct, against a race 
 which is still struggling for life against enormous 
 odds. The reason why I have made an effort to 
 write this book at the present time is the desire to 
 try, however feebly, to counteract the effect of the 
 telling indictment which the " Wandering Scholar " 
 has brought against the whole Armenian people, 
 as a set of conspirators. I was most unwilling to 
 protest against his words ; for what is really mere 
 difference of opinion between two friends is liable 
 to be misconstrued by the public into rivalry be- 
 tween two competing scholars. But for the truth 
 of history, in the urgent need of a people that is 
 being exterminated amid the indifference or even 
 the jeers of many, I volunteer my evidence. 
 
 The secret societies, or society, which took 
 name from the Huntchak quarter of Constanti- 
 nople, caused much harm to the Armenian cause. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 195 
 
 Such societies are out of keeping with modern 
 ways. It is indeed probable, or even certain, that 
 the Greek kingdom would not have been set free 
 from the Turkish tyranny until a much later period 
 (if at all), had it not been for the powerful secret 
 society which prepared and organised the insur- 
 rection ; but it may be doubted if the Ethnike 
 Hetaireia still continues to be of any advantage to 
 the Greek cause. It is easy for those who live at 
 ease to condemn the Huntchagists ; and it must 
 be confessed both that their policy was entirely un- 
 wise, in the face of the overwhelming power of 
 Russia, to which they were running counter, and 
 that in some respects it seems to have been not 
 merely reckless, but morally wrong. But, after 
 all is said, my own sympathy remains entire and 
 unbroken on the side of the suffering people, the 
 the vast majority of whom were wholly ignorant 
 and innocent of the plotting. 
 
 As usual, my method shall be to give some ex- 
 amples from actual life, as they have come before 
 me and gradually formed my opinions. 
 
 In 1 88 1 we stayed a night in the town of 
 Sandykli, a considerable place and seat of a kaim- 
 makam. An Armenian came to call upon us, and 
 entreated us to visit his house ; he said he was the 
 only Christian resident in the place, and it was 
 so rare an event to see a Christian that he was 
 
196 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 eager to receive and welcome us. He showed us 
 all the kindness in his power, sent wine to the 
 house which had been placed at our disposal by 
 the kaimmakam, and took a good deal of trouble 
 to help us. As a rule, such conduct is rare among 
 Armenians ; so far as my experience goes, they 
 are not hospitable or disposed to take trouble to 
 help a stranger. Persons who are strongly anti- 
 Armenian in feeling may attribute the kindness of 
 my friend in Sandykli to the fact that the kaim- 
 makam had set the example of courtesy, being 
 greatly impressed by the account which our Al- 
 banian servant gave of us (see p. 282). But one who 
 cannot tell by a man's face and eyes whether his 
 hospitality is genuine or not, is not likely to make 
 much success as a traveller. I have not, in general, 
 any liking for being claimed as a fellow-Christian 
 by well-to-do but ill-educated Armenian shop- 
 keepers. It depends very much on circumstances 
 and persons, what emotion is roused by the claim 
 to association and community. Many a Greek 
 peasant, poor but full of love for education, has 
 after some acquaintance glided insensibly into the 
 address " Adelphe " (Brother), and I have appreci- 
 ated it as a compliment ; but my friend the 
 " Wandering Scholar " has seen me chuck out of 
 the room after very short talk some conceited and 
 familiar young Greeklings of the wealthier classes. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 197 
 
 If I felt that the Armenian of whom I speak had 
 a common religion with me and claim of brother- 
 hood founded thereon, it was because his heart 
 spoke through his eyes to mine. 
 
 In 1883, at Afiom-Kara-Hissar, the Armenian 
 correspondent of the Ottoman Bank, 1 to whom I 
 had a letter of credit, abused his advantage to 
 charge 5 per cent, discount on my cheque. This 
 was, as I knew, and as a high bank official after- 
 wards confirmed, illegal and simple extortion ; and 
 I declined to submit. I told him I could sell my 
 cheque better in the open market, and left him. 
 In the street another Armenian resident came up a 
 few minutes later, entered into conversation, and 
 pressed us to visit him. He took us out to his 
 country house several hours' ride from the city, 
 entertained us handsomely, and conversed with 
 good sense and good feeling. Hearing about my 
 affair with the banker, he at once said that he would 
 cash my cheque in full ; and when I pointed out 
 that in the circumstances it was quite fair that a 
 certain discount should be charged, especially as 
 my cheque was on Smyrna, not on Constantinople 
 (where his correspondents were), he declared that 
 he wanted to send money to Constantinople and 
 the advantage was all on his side. In this case 
 
 x ln 1881 there was a branch of the Ottoman Bank there, which 
 was closed as not profitable. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 
 
 nothing could be better than his action and manner 
 throughout ; and he was behaving thus to an entire 
 stranger, whom he met in the street, about whom 
 he knew nothing, except that I had been arrested 
 and brought to the city by Zaptiehs a few hours 
 previously on a charge of having excavated gold 
 from the tomb of an old Phrygian chief, and that I 
 was still under police surveillance. 
 
 Incidentally, I may remark how ready many 
 Greeks and Armenians in the inner parts of Turkey 
 have been to accept the cheque of a person who 
 was to them an utter stranger. I don't know 
 whether to attribute it to simplicity and ignorance 
 of fraud (qualities not often attributed to either 
 race), or to compliment myself on having honesty 
 written on my face and them on being able to 
 read it, or simply to see in it the proof that by long 
 wandering and many visits I had come to be very 
 widely known. In 1890, for example, I walked 
 into the bazaar at Nigde, an important town, near 
 Tyana in Cappadocia, and asked a Greek money 
 changer whether he would cash my cheque on 
 Smyrna. He at once said he would take it, and 
 demanded 2 per cent, discount, evidently expect- 
 ing to be beaten down. As one has usually to pay 
 5 per cent, sometimes even 10 per cent, discount 
 for changing money into small silver, I thought his 
 demand was entirely reasonable. That is only one 
 
THE ARMENIANS 
 
 example out of many. The only people who made 
 difficulties about taking my cheques were officials 
 of the bank's branches. 
 
 The Kara-Hissar banker was a typical example 
 of the narrow, sordid, tyrannical Armenian traders ; 
 I have seen him often, was once forced unwillingly 
 to partake of his hospitality, when I came after- 
 wards in less suspicious circumstances,but have liked 
 him less each time than the preceding. Once I tried 
 to induce him to use his influence to have a very 
 interesting early Christian inscription and relief 1 
 brought to Kara-Hissar for safe keeping in the 
 Armenian church ; but the attempt was vain. It 
 must, however, be acknowledged that his objection 
 that the government was suspicious of every one 
 who had any connection with monuments was 
 quite true, and in the light of recent events, the 
 disgust I felt with his cowardly attitude is proved 
 to have been unfair. He gauged the relation in 
 which he stood to the government better than I. 
 The recent persecution has been directed against 
 every sign of interest in the past, as showing a 
 tendency to revive Armenia. 
 
 Take two more instances of this class of Armenian. 
 In the end of May, 1883, we came to Serai-Keui, 
 
 1 Published from a drawing by Mrs. Ramsay in my Church in 
 the Roman Empire, facing p. 440, and Cities and Bishoprics of 
 Phrygia, p. 736. 
 
2OO THE ARMENIANS 
 
 at the newly-constructed terminus of the Ottoman 
 Railway. 1 A khan had just been built by an 
 Armenian to accommodate the rapidly growing 
 traffic ; and we stayed there one night. In a khan 
 the traveller is understood to supply his own food, 
 and we did so ; but, in addition, the Armenian 
 khanji pressed on our Greek cook and Turkish ser- 
 vant some small quantities of sugar, etc., for their 
 evening meal ; and he insisted on saving the cook 
 the trouble of procuring the fowl, which he was 
 ordered to buy. The Turkish muleteer who was 
 with us was bound (according to the usual bargain) to 
 feed himself and three horses : our two were attended 
 to by our Turkish servant, and paid for by us. 
 
 In the morning the khanji sent in a bill of por- 
 tentous extent, on a long and dirty sheet of paper, 
 in which small quantities of almost every conceiv- 
 able kind of grocery, with many other things which 
 I could not read, were charged at famine prices. 
 A night at a first-class hotel in New York would 
 hardly have been so expensive as that night, spent 
 on the mud floor of the yard of the khan (our 
 room being too filthy for habitation). I sent for 
 the khanji and told him I would pay him half, and 
 that the half was triple what I ought to pay. He 
 began to bluster and threaten. At that time, near 
 the beginning of my work, when the Asia Minor 
 1 See p. 131 f. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 2OI 
 
 Exploration Fund had just been raised, and success 
 was problematical, I was in no humour either to 
 spend the Fund unprofitably, or to stand a moment's 
 trifling with a decision which had been once 
 pronounced : success afterwards produced easier 
 temper, but also, I fear, greater laziness. Without 
 a word, but merely showing half the amount of the 
 bill ready in my hand, I ordered the horses to be 
 prepared and loaded ; when this was done, every 
 one mounted, and we started ; I offered the money 
 once more in vain, put it in my pocket, and rode 
 out last of all ; the khanji came up and laid his 
 hand on the reins to stop me ; my riding-whip 
 came down sharply on his hand, and he drew it 
 back. I never saw him again ; but near three 
 months afterwards, when I was at Serai-Keui again, 
 a servant from the khanji came and asked for the 
 money, which was paid at once. This incident 
 caused some talk and general pleasure in Serai- 
 Keui, where the khanji was cordially detested and 
 much feared. 
 
 At Sivri-Hissar in 1883 I was greatly delighted 
 with the beautiful glossy socks 1 of Angora wool 
 which are sold there. One of our servants bought 
 a pair ; and I told him to go and get twenty pairs 
 for me, intending to send some as gifts to deserving 
 friends at home. He came back, saying that the 
 
 1 See p. 274. 
 
202 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 Armenian, from whom he had bought his pair, 
 did not possess so many, but would try to procure 
 them. Next morning, as we were ready to start, 
 the socks were delivered, and hastily put into my 
 bag. On the following day, I took out a pair to 
 put on ; and the very sight of them, glistening like 
 silk, was cool and refreshing. Each pair was bright, 
 and clean, and glossy white ; and each was so 
 arranged that one sock was concealed within the 
 other. In the first pair, the inner sock was a 
 tattered rag of common wool ; and on trial every 
 pair was the same. I had twenty good socks and 
 twenty bad. The Armenian had procured twenty 
 worn-out socks, washed them, and thus made ten 
 good pairs into twenty. Then he had watched 
 until we were on the point of departure, when his 
 fraud would be more likely to pass unnoticed. 
 
 These are specimens of the class of Armenian, 
 who bring the people into general hatred and con- 
 tempt. I might multiply examples ; and so could 
 every one that has ever been in the East. In fact, 
 ordinary travellers or tourists in Asia Minor rarely 
 meet any other class of Armenian, for education 
 has not been spread among the Armenians in 
 western Anatolia, where the American missionary 
 influence has hardly been felt. 1 In Constantinople, 
 
 1 The mission stations exist chiefly in the central and eastern 
 districts : Smyrna and Manissa are, I think, the only stations in 
 the west. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 203 
 
 and even in Smyrna, I have no acquaintance with 
 the resident Armenians, having found the Greeks 
 far more sympathetic and useful in archaeological 
 work. It is that class of Armenians of whom the 
 author of Anadol says : " Using his influence and 
 ascendency over the great, he protects the poor, 
 to fatten on the forestalled earnings of the plough, 
 boat, waggon, or camel, which he holds in pawn. 
 Despised on one side, hated on the other, he is 
 enriched alike by the Pasha and the peasant ; and 
 well he knows the weight and power of that golden 
 lever which he wields." Almost the entire carry- 
 ing trade between the Black Sea harbours, and all 
 parts of Asia that come into trade relations with 
 those harbours, is in the hands of Armenians ; and 
 the poor waggoners, camel-drivers, etc., are their 
 slaves. A vast population of the distributing and 
 retail trade belongs to them, except in those west 
 and south-western parts where the Greeks are all- 
 powerful. They are not popular, and they do not 
 deserve to be, so far as my experience goes. But 
 to speak of that large and powerful class of Ar- 
 menians as implicated in secret societies, and as 
 engaged at any period of their lives in plots against 
 the government, would be as ridiculous as to accuse 
 Messrs. Glynn, Mills & Co. of taking part in a 
 conspiracy to blow up the Bank of England with 
 dynamite. I even doubt if the Ottoman Govern- 
 
204 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 ment is unpopular among the majority of that 
 class of Armenians, for Turkey is the paradise of 
 the rich unscrupulous man, who does not shrink 
 from using the power of the purse. 
 
 Further, that is not the class of Armenians 
 which has given rise to the recent Imperial policy 
 of massacre. None know better than the palace 
 officials that their most useful, nay, their indis- 
 pensable instruments in misgoverning the Empire, 
 have always been found in that class and in a 
 corresponding class of Phanariote Greeks. It is 
 among the poor Mohammedan peasantry that the 
 Armenian capitalists are hated ; and the massacres 
 do not originate from the peasants. Generally 
 speaking, that class of Armenians has suffered 
 from the massacres only so far as it was necessary 
 to appeal to the greed and envy of the Moham- 
 medan city mob in order to rouse them to the 
 pitch of massacre. 
 
 But that class of the Armenians cannot fairly 
 be taken, though it often is taken, as fair specimens 
 of the Armenian race. It is not the natural growth 
 of the Armenian qualities and religion, it is the 
 necessary outcome of eight centuries of Turkish 
 rule. To appreciate what Turkish rule is, we 
 must not go to travellers in recent years, who have 
 seen only the condition of central and western 
 Anatolia roughly speaking, Asia Minor west of 
 
THE ARMENIANS 2O5 
 
 the Euphrates where, for a number of years, 
 Turkish administration has been carried on under 
 constant dread of European interference, and where 
 the Christian population has been saved from wrong 
 by that dread. Yet even there, take the following 
 example out of many which reached my ears, on 
 the authority of Mr. Barkley (Ride through Asia 
 Minor, p. 109), not a man who has any prejudice 
 in favour of Armenians (as any reader of his book 
 will see). " In October, 1877 ... at an Armenian 
 village, eight hours from Yuzgat, a band of recruits 
 arrived one evening. They . . . ordered the 
 villagers to bring them everthing they had, money, 
 food, etc. The people in a panic obeyed "... 
 (only hiding their raki, which the soldiers rum- 
 maged till they found). " Then they made a hell 
 of the place. Every woman, young and old, was 
 insulted and outraged in presence of husband, 
 fathers, and brothers. All the cattle, horses, and 
 sheep were either stabbed or shot, and finally 
 the village was burnt to the ground. Then the 
 ruffians departed for Yuzgat, forcing the men of 
 the village to accompany them as porters, the 
 soldiers even riding on the men themselves ; some 
 of the old and feeble soon broke down, but were 
 forced to continue by being pricked forward with 
 knives and bayonets. One old man actually died 
 on the road." But the British consul, a man of 
 
206 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 vigour and knowledge of the country, at Angora 
 investigated the facts, reported them by telegraph, 
 and succeeded in compelling punishment. "The 
 end of it all was, that the soldiers were caught, and, 
 as all was proved to have occurred as stated, the 
 officer in command was degraded^ while some of the 
 men were sentenced to prison for five years." As 
 Mr. Barkley remarks, this " was not a very severe 
 punishment for wholesale rape, arson, robbery, and 
 murder" especially as we don't know how long 
 the imprisonment lasted in fact but it was sufficient 
 to be a salutary and lasting lesson, for any exercise 
 of official authority in punishment of crime pro- 
 duces an immense effect in Turkey. The consul 
 at Angora related the same story to me in 1881, 
 but I prefer to give it in Mr. Barkley's words (like- 
 wise derived from the consul) to add another 
 witness. 
 
 We must, however, go back to an older time, 
 if we want to appreciate what uncontrolled Turkish 
 rule meant, alike to Armenians and to Greeks. It 
 did not mean religious persecution ; it meant un- 
 utterable contempt. The Turk did not mind what 
 religion those dogs belonged to, and he was as far 
 as possible from conceiving the wish to make them 
 Mohammedans. They were dogs and pigs ; and 
 their nature was to be Christians, to be spat upon, 
 * The italics are Mr. Barkley's. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 2O7 
 
 if their shadow darkened a Turk, to be outraged, 
 to be the mats on which he wiped the mud from 
 his feet. Conceive the inevitable result of centuries 
 of slavery, of subjection to insult and scorn, cen- 
 turies in which nothing that belonged to the 
 Armenian, neither his property, his house, his life, 
 his person, nor his family, was sacred or safe from 
 violence capricious, unprovoked violence to resist 
 which by violence meant death ! I do not mean 
 that every Armenian suffered so ; but that every 
 one lived in conscious danger from any chance 
 disturbance or riot. Every one knew that any 
 sign of spirit or courage would be almost certain 
 to draw down immediate punishment ; and that 
 in bribery of the officials lay the only hope of 
 redress, and the best chance of escape. They are 
 charged, by the voice of almost every traveller, 
 with timidity and even cowardice ; but for centuries 
 they had the choice offered them between submis- 
 sion and death. So long as they were perfectly 
 submissive, they were allowed to live in compara- 
 tive quiet ; so long as they had money, they could 
 purchase some immunity from, or redress for, insult. 
 Naturally and necessarily the bravest were killed off, 
 they that could most readily cringe and submit 
 survived, and all efforts were directed to acquiring 
 money, as the only means of providing safety for 
 family and self. 
 
2O8 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 This account, so far from being an exaggeration, 
 does not convey to people accustomed to safety of 
 the person, and unused to the brutality of which 
 Oriental nature is capable, an idea approaching the 
 real horror of the situation in which the Christians 
 lived in many parts not in all parts of Turkey. 
 As to European Turkey, a witness of unimpeachable 
 authority, who under the name of " A Consul's 
 Daughter and Wife " wrote in 1878 on The People of 
 Turkey ', ii., p. 121, after mentioning the custom she 
 had seen in Macedonia of holding marriages in a 
 cellar, says : " The custom of marrying in the most 
 retired part of the house instead of the church, 
 among the peasants, is, according to my information, 
 the result of the dread they had in times of oppres- 
 sion of giving unnecessary publicity to their gather- 
 ings, and thus inviting the cupidity of some savage 
 band of their oppressors. . . . This state of things 
 was brought back during recent events. Some 
 months ago ... in Macedonia, the bridal pro- 
 cession had just returned from church, when a band 
 of Turks fell upon the house, robbing and beating 
 right and left until they arrived at the unfortunate 
 bride, whom, after divesting of all her belongings, 
 they dishonoured and left to bewail her misfortunes 
 in never-ending misery." It is a fact familiar to 
 every person who has even the slightest acquaint- 
 ance with the condition of the parts of Armenia 
 
THE ARMENIANS 
 
 most exposed to Kurdish incursions, that incidents 
 of that class have always been too common to 
 attract notice. They were, in most cases, not even 
 special acts of revenge aimed at a special family by 
 enemies ; they were an ordinary thing, an amuse- 
 ment of the district, which could be prevented 
 among the poor only by concealing the marriage. 
 The only difference from the Macedonian incident 
 is that the Armenian bride was usually carried 
 away for several days and made the property of 
 the Kurdish village. That was the permanent 
 condition, from which escape could be obtained 
 only by money or by death. 
 
 It has been asserted by persons who could readily 
 procure evidence, if they wished to find it, before 
 making assertions, that this state of things belongs 
 only to the last few years, and is the punishment 
 for the intrigues and plotting of the Armenians. 
 But in the districts where the Kurds have been 
 dominant, such things were the rule long ago ; they 
 were talked about, and were the subject of consular 
 reports and ambassadorial intervention, when I first 
 saw Turkey and began to learn what was the con- 
 dition of the country. It was in the recoil from a 
 condition like this, under the stimulating hope of 
 British consular interference, and through the 
 growing knowledge of European and American 
 freedom, that the secret societies began to become 
 
210 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 important. But the great mass of the people was 
 too ignorant and too down-trodden to take any 
 part in the plots. 
 
 It has certainly been a thousand times worse since 
 the Sultan took the Kurds under his protection, 
 and gave special honours to the most outrageous 
 among their chiefs. In former times the Kurds 
 were considered enemies of the government, and 
 the officials in the feeble, helpless, incapable way 
 in which Turkish administration is conducted, made 
 a show of trying to protect their Armenian subjects 
 from them. But under the present Sultan, such a 
 pretence ceased. In the style of the pugnacious 
 Irishman, trailing his coat through the village, and 
 asking "if any gintleman would tread on the tail of 
 it," your Kurd stalked through an Armenian village 
 glaring round to see if any one would venture to 
 look at him, or if any one would be so insulting as 
 not to be doing what the barbarian's momentary 
 caprice chose to consider that the wretch ought to 
 be doing. The only way in which the miserable 
 peasant could make sure of giving no insult to 
 the Kurdish ruffian, as he stalked through the 
 place, was to keep out of his sight ; on those who 
 offended him the punishment was inflicted in in- 
 describable brutality, by people whose amusement 
 and talk, whose jests and cursing, lie in extremes 
 of horror, surpassing the disgustingness of those 
 
THE ARMENIANS 211 
 
 crimes which seem to us so unnatural as to imply 
 insanity in the perpetrators. 
 
 To appreciate what was the situation to the 
 verge of which the Armenians were often brought 
 and which they felt as a danger continually 
 threatening them in case they displeased their 
 masters and a riot was roused, one must conceive 
 what has been always the character of a thorough- 
 going Turkish massacre. It does not mean merely 
 that thousands are killed in a few days by the 
 sword, the torture, or the fire. It does not mean 
 merely that everything they possess is stolen, their 
 houses and shops looted and often burned, every 
 article worth a halfpenny taken, the corpses 
 stripped. It does not mean merely that the sur- 
 vivers are left penniless without food, sometimes 
 literally stark naked. That is only the beginning, 
 the brighter and lighter side of a massacre in 
 Turkey. Sometimes, when the Turks have been 
 specially merciful, they have offered their victims 
 an escape from death by accepting Mohammedan- 
 ism. But as to the darker side of Turkish massacre 
 personal outrage and shame take what the 
 more freespoken historians of former times have 
 told ; gather together the details of the most 
 horrible and indescribable outrages that occasional 
 criminals of half-lunatic character commit in this 
 country ; imagine those criminals collected in 
 
212 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 thousands, heated with the hard work of murder, 
 inciting each other and vying with each other, 
 encouraged by the government officials with 
 promises of impunity and hope of plunder 
 imagine the result if you can, and you will have 
 some faint idea of the massacres in the eastern 
 parts of Turkey. 
 
 There has been no exaggeration in the worst 
 accounts of the horrors of Armenia. A writer 
 with the vivid imagination of Dumas and the 
 knowledge of evil that Zola possesses could not 
 attain, by any description, the effect that the sight 
 of one massacre in the Kurdish part of Armenia 
 would produce on any spectator. The Kurdish 
 part of Armenia is the " black country ". It has 
 become a charnel house. One dare not enter it. 
 One cannot think about it. One knows not how 
 many maimed, mutilated, outraged Armenians 
 are still starving there. 
 
 Further, to rightly appreciate the educative sur- 
 roundings in which Turks grow up, one must 
 remember that such massacres were preached and 
 roused and led by the priests, who set the example 
 in some cases of treating the murder of Armenians 
 as a holy sacrifice, and who promised special 
 honour in Paradise to all who joined in the holy 
 work, teaching that massacre and outrage of Giaours 
 is a religious merit. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 213 
 
 But it is not the case that all Turks in any city 
 took part in massacre. The better class dis- 
 approved ; many regretted ; some even tried to 
 save Armenian friends. It must be remembered 
 that it needs an extraordinary strength of emotion 
 to rouse a Turk to actual interference with what he 
 regards as the will of God ; and their natural view 
 was that the massacre had been willed by God and 
 the Padishah, and the fact must be accepted ; and 
 yet some did interfere. But the city mob, after it 
 was once roused by priests and officials, revelled 
 in the work. The conduct of the blacks in the 
 island of S. Domingo, when they rose against the 
 planters and the garrison, and murdered almost 
 everybody, furnishes the nearest parallel to Ar- 
 menia ; but there the planters retaliated. 
 
 In the course of years in an uneasy and uncer- 
 tain country, it has been strongly impressed on my 
 mind that the higher moral development is hardly 
 possible for a class or a race, until it has obtained 
 security for the person. The first gift of God to 
 man is his body ; that gift is man's free possession, 
 which no other man has any right to slay or to 
 vitiate ; and safety of the person lies at the basis 
 of moral progress. So long as men live with the 
 possibility of murder and outrage present before 
 their minds, the higher qualities of character cannot 
 be developed. Even the most trustworthy, steady, 
 
214 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 and disciplined troops, and their officers, 1 tend to 
 become demoralised by long exposure to unseen 
 and incalculable attacks ; but when a race or clan 
 of men spends its existence from childhood up- 
 wards in such a situation, life degenerates into a 
 craven and degrading scramble for safety ; and if 
 safety can be gained best by ignoble acts, then only 
 they survive that are quick to act ignobly. 
 
 But, it may be said, the Armenians have been 
 craven to accept this lot, and should have preferred 
 death. Let those who have proved that they 
 could themselves choose death in preference to 
 a slave's life, cast reproach at them ; and those 
 who reproach the Armenians that have lived are 
 all the more bound to approve the Armenians 
 that have rebelled. 
 
 The Armenian, as he is after eight centuries of 
 slavery, has been described in the preceding pages. 
 But there remains a small group of Armenians free 
 and unconquered by the Turks. In the fastnesses 
 of the Taurus mountains there exists a remnant of 
 the once powerful Armenian kingdom, which ruled 
 over great part of Cilicia and the adjoining hill- 
 country of Cappadocia and Isauria for several 
 centuries, after the rest of eastern and central Asia 
 Minor had become a Turkish possession. It was a 
 
 1 I speak not without testimony from men, whose tried courage 
 has made their name familiar to the world. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 21$ 
 
 prince of these Armenians who welcomed Barba- 
 rossa and his crusading army on their toilsome 
 march from Konia over Taurus to the southern sea, 
 a few days before the great German Emperor 
 perished prematurely in the waters of the Kaly- 
 kadnos. If the Armenians subject to Turkey tend 
 towards a timid and submissive type, the contrast 
 of the free Armenians proves that the timidity is 
 the result of the long repression and the " reign 
 of terror". The few thousands of free Armenians 
 of Zeitun maintained their freedom against all 
 efforts of the Turks till 1879, when the modern 
 cannon of a large army compelled a surrender. By 
 ambassadorial intervention (English mainly, I be- 
 lieve), the intended general massacre was prevented ; 
 but a fort was built commanding Zeitun. Again, 
 in the desperation caused by the massacres of the 
 last few years, Zeitun rebelled, captured by assault 
 the fort, held, though it was, by superior numbers, 
 and resisted for months every attack of a Turkish 
 army far more numerous than all the Armenians, 
 men, women and children numbered together : the 
 army was officered by Turks. But the Powers 
 intervened, " in the interests of peace " ; the con- 
 suls from Aleppo came and induced the Zeitunli to 
 lay down their weapons, to submit to disarmament, 
 to give up their old flint-locks and muzzle-loaders, 
 with which they had beaten the improved repeating 
 
216 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 rifles of a Turkish army. All this was done under 
 the solemn pledge and guarantee that, if the Zeit- 
 unli surrendered their weapons and submitted to the 
 Turks, a Christian governor would be placed in 
 authority over them. Not a word more has been 
 spoken by the Powers about a Christian governor ; 
 and I am not sure how many of those cheated Ar- 
 menians still live to be governed. 
 
 The free Armenian is not unlike the Kurd in 
 certain characteristics. 1 The faults to which both 
 tend are graspingness and selfishness, in contrast 
 to the Greeks, who tend rather towards the faults of 
 vanity and display. Both free Armenian and Kurd 
 cling desperately to their freedom, and in the sur- 
 roundings of the Turkish Empire both were unruly, 
 a thorn in the side of the Turkish government, a 
 terror to traders, and almost a bar to communica- 
 tion. I believe that the Kurd is just the Moham- 
 medan Armenian, and the Armenian is the Kurd 
 passed through centuries of Christianity. To that 
 extent the view taken by the "Wandering Scholar" 
 seems to me correct ; and it relates only to an 
 exceedingly small fraction of the Armenians of 
 Turkey. 
 
 Yet, while it is true that, of all the races with 
 whj6m I have mixed in Turkey, there is none that 
 I have personally liked less than the Armenians, 
 
 1 On the Kurds, see pp. 47 f, 114 f. 
 
THE ARMENIANS 217 
 
 none among whom I have found so little interest 
 in history, none to whom I owe so little individual 
 gratitude for kindness shown to a traveller and a 
 guest, none who have so often treated me as a 
 stranger whose sole interest in their eyes was the 
 possibility of making money off him, none whose 
 character has seemed to me generally so bound 
 down to the estimate of life by the standard of 
 money alone yet I will say for the Armenians 
 that they have furnished the most striking ex- 
 amples known to me of capacity to receive and 
 assimilate and rise quickly to the level of higher 
 education and nobler nature, when the opportunity 
 has been placed before them by other people. It 
 is among the Protestants that these examples 
 most occur ; and this brings us to the subject of 
 the American missions in Turkey (ch. ix.). 
 
 So far as I have had any experience, the priests 
 of the Gregorian Church seemed more ignorant and 
 on a lower intellectual level than those of any other 
 form of Christianity that I have come in contact 
 with. 1 For example, at an Armenian monastery 
 three hours east of Kaisari, we had an interview with 
 the Armenian bishop. He had entered the monastery 
 at the age of ten, and had never been outside of its 
 walls during the sixty years that had elapsed since 
 then. His conversation showed as much ignorance 
 
 1 On this subject more is said on p. 248. 
 
21 8 THE ARMENIANS 
 
 of the Gospel history, as it did of the modern world. 
 His mind, so far as any mind remained to him, 
 was taken up entirely with trivialities and monkish 
 legends. The body of St. John the Baptist, or the 
 Forerunner, as they call him, is preserved in the 
 monastery, which is dedicated to him. The bishop 
 informed us that it was recorded in the Bible that, 
 when the Jews murdered John the Forerunner at 
 Caesareia Philippi, John the Evangelist took the 
 body and carried it to Ephesus. The rest of the 
 story, he said, was not recorded in the Bible, but 
 had been written by the secretary of Gregory the 
 Illuminator, the Armenian Saint : the disciples of 
 John brought the body from Ephesus to this 
 monastery, and there the head had been separated 
 from the body and carried first to Constantinople 
 and then to Rome, where (as the bishop said) it 
 now is. We got our Armenian interpreter (an 
 excellent fellow, educated at Robert College) to ask 
 what part Herodias' daughter had played in the 
 murder of the Forerunner by the Jews ; but the 
 bishop had never heard of that lady. 
 
 The Greeks also claim to have the body of John 
 the Baptist. They showed it to us at the large 
 village which stands on the estate that once belonged 
 to the family of Gregory Nazianzen, three hours 
 south of Nazianzos. It was in a large chest, which 
 contained also the head of Gregory himself, and 
 
THE ARMENIANS 219 
 
 enough of other bones (presumably of saints and 
 martyrs) to stock a museum. We told the bishop 
 through our interpreter that the Greeks had showed 
 us the body of the Forerunner ; but he briefly re- 
 plied, " The Greeks are liars ". 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES AND THE ARMENIAN 
 PROTESTANTS. 
 
 I BEGAN with a strong prejudice against the 
 American mission-work. I had heard from several 
 sides reports that the missionaries " lend the cloak 
 of religion to these Armenians, who use it partly to 
 conceal their swindling, lying, cheating, and other 
 mean vices, partly in the hope of getting a little 
 protection from the missionaries, and through them 
 sometimes obtaining a measure of justice". Other 
 reports had been different ; but the latter I had re- 
 garded as due to pious prejudice in favour of converts 
 brought into the true fold, while the former seemed 
 to me to be the cool judgment of men of affairs. 
 Gradually, and by slow steps, I came to reverse 
 my opinion in the light of what I saw. 
 
 It seems to me quite true that several of the Pro- 
 testants whom I saw had not been converts accord- 
 ing to the sense in which many pious people consider 
 that true conversion must take place the sense, 
 e.g., in which the convert is convinced of sin by a 
 preacher of the Salvation Army. They had adopted 
 
 (220) 
 
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES, ETC. 221 
 
 Protestantism from a rational conclusion that the 
 American missionaries stood on a higher platform 
 of life and conduct and circumstances, and were 
 representatives of a higher civilisation and society, 
 than the Gregorian Church. Therein lies, in my 
 estimation, the real strength of the American mis- 
 sionary movement : their policy seemed to me not 
 to be simply directed to converting persons from a 
 different form of Christianity to their own a policy 
 with which I should have small sympathy in any 
 circumstances, and none in face of the common foe. 
 So far as I could judge, the missionaries tried to 
 carry out what I believe to be a higher and a 
 wiser course. In imparting education they did not 
 proselytise. Their converts were not made in their 
 colleges and schools. They sought, first and fore- 
 most, to organise an improved system of education 
 for a people already Christian, but deplorably ill- 
 educated, and debarred by the Turkish policy for 
 many centuries from receiving any proper educa- 
 tion ; inasmuch as any system of education among 
 the Armenians was necessarily inconsistent with 
 the repression of every symptom of freedom or 
 union or organisation among them, which con- 
 stituted the Armenian policy of the Turks. The 
 reforming policy of Sultan Mahmud, after he recog- 
 nised that the empire could not be maintained 
 simply on massacres like that of the Greeks in 
 
222 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 Scio, or of the Janissaries in Stambol, inaugurated 
 a new era. But the Armenians themselves were too 
 crushed and down-trodden to take advantage of it ; 
 and, moreover, there was a great difference between 
 the intention of the Sultan in Stambol and the 
 actual fact in Sivas or Erzerum or Mardin or Khar- 
 put Mahmud might order that a new spirit should 
 reign; but he could not put the new spirit into his 
 officials in the provinces. 
 
 The American mission stepped in to offer to the 
 Armenians what they could not make for them- 
 selves. It was under Sultan Mahmud (who died in 
 1839) that they inaugurated their enterprise ; and it 
 is literally true that it was a scheme encouraged and 
 patronised by the Imperial Government and by the 
 most enlightened among the Turks. Both Mahmud 
 and his two successors were favourable to the culti- 
 vation of right relations between the Christian and 
 the Moslem sections of their subjects, and freely 
 granted to the missionaries all the rights and privi- 
 leges they needed or wished. It was, of course, 
 not possible to eradicate the fanaticism of the 
 Moslem town mob by an Imperial order. The early 
 missionaries in distant cities were often in a very 
 precarious position. Dr. Farnsworth, the senior 
 missionary in Kaisari, a man of singularly good 
 knowledge of Turkey, whom you might look for on 
 his rounds through his district alike in the deepest 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 223 
 
 snows of winter and the hottest sun of summer, told 
 me that when he first went to the city, the Pasha 
 was so afraid that anything might happen to a man 
 who was under the Imperial protection, that he 
 would not allow the missionary to go about the city 
 without a guard. The whole force of conservatism, 
 alike among Mohammedans and Armenians, was 
 arrayed against these pioneers. 
 
 Another important fact to observe is that the 
 Russian and French influence was used to the 
 utmost in high quarters against the missionaries. 1 
 It is true that there was no alliance and little 
 friendship between the American and the English 
 Governments. It is also true that the missionaries 
 have from first to last made it the foundation of 
 their policy to avoid all political complications, to 
 restrict themselves absolutely to their own work of 
 education, and to be equally friendly to all civilised 
 and civilising influences. But the two European 
 nations, who were most opposed to British influence 
 in the East, never for a moment wavered in the 
 belief that the American missions were favourable 
 to Britain, or relaxed their opposition to the 
 missionaries. Nor was their instinct false. There 
 is no getting over the fact that Americans and 
 British, when they meet in a land like Turkey, 
 
 1 See Dr. Hamlin in North American Review, Sept., 1896, p. 278. 
 
224 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 feel the tie of manners and blood and religion ; 
 and try as they might to be neutral and non- 
 political, the missionaries could not prevent their 
 action from producing an effect in favour of 
 Britain. The people of the country can rarely 
 distinguish between the two peoples, and are hardly 
 ever quite clear whether Amellika is a part of 
 Londra or Londra a town of Amellika. 
 
 Moreover, the missionaries were Protestant ; and 
 the growth of Protestant spirit and sympathies is 
 never favourable to French or Russian policy, or 
 at least is never reckoned by French or Russians 
 as favourable to their influence. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that very bad feeling and 
 even gross abuse was often shown by Gregorian 
 or Catholic Armenians to the Protestants ; but this 
 feeling has been painted by some writers in some- 
 what exaggerated terms. They hear some facts, 
 and state them correctly, but give the incorrect im- 
 pression, that there is nothing else on the other side. 
 It is really not fair to take some scraps of private 
 conversation, print them, and spread the idea that 
 they convey, a complete picture of a complicated 
 and difficult historical problem. Let me give one 
 observation on the other side. In 1882 I wrote: 
 " In one instance I think that we found a Protes- 
 tant village, 1 but usually there are only a few 
 
 1 I cannot say whether this impression was correct or not. 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 22$ 
 
 Protestants in a village, while the mass of the 
 people belong to the Armenian Church. In 
 Comana the two parties seemed to be on very good 
 terms. The Armenians chaffed the Protestants 
 for their laziness and gluttony, and declared that 
 they had changed their religion only to avoid the 
 frequent church-going on saints' days and the long 
 fasts of the orthodox community ; but it was 
 done in apparent good humour. I went a walk 
 in company with the Protestant pastor (who was 
 an Armenian educated in one of the American 
 schools) and the Armenian schoolmaster, who be- 
 longed to the Gregorian Church ; and we seemed 
 all three to be bosom friends, busied in the pursuit 
 of Greek letters. Each of them was delighted to 
 receive a dollar towards the expenses of his own 
 school ; and the Protestant gave me his blessing in 
 quite patriarchal style when I departed." I do not 
 give this as the whole truth. The missionaries had 
 to contend long against the enmity of the Gre- 
 gorians ; but, with the Armenians' intense devotion 
 to their down-trodden Church, it is not unnatural 
 that many of them should have regarded the 
 missionaries with extreme and bitter hatred. It was 
 an unavoidable stage in a social process ; but it was 
 only a stage ; and in recent years it has to a not 
 inconsiderable extent been surmounted. 
 
 It is, then, quite true that the missionaries had 
 '5 
 
226 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 almost every influence against them except the 
 three former Sultans, though there were occasional 
 examples of generosity among the provincial 
 Turks, as when one refused to sell a piece of land 
 for the Central Asian College in Aintab, but pre- 
 sented it as a gift to those who were unselfishly 
 trying to benefit his country. But, in spite of 
 every obstacle, the mission grew into one of the 
 greatest and most beneficent organisations that 
 have ever been elaborated by private enterprise and 
 skill. Robert College in Constantinople is the 
 central point, and I think the earliest ; and I 
 believe firmly that Robert College has done more 
 to render possible a safe solution of the " Eastern 
 Question" in European Turkey, than all the ambassa- 
 dors of all the European Powers have succeeded in 
 doing to render that solution difficult; and the 
 reason is that the missionary colleges have sought 
 neither to gain anything themselves nor to prevent 
 others from gaining anything, whereas the whole 
 aim of the diplomacy of every European Power 
 has been first to prevent any other from gaining 
 anything, and secondly to achieve some selfish 
 gain. 
 
 An educated middle class is almost entirely 
 absent from Oriental countries and Oriental society, 
 in which there are only a monarch and his slaves, 
 some more favoured, some less, but all equally de- 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 22? 
 
 pendent on his caprice. Free constitutional govern- 
 ment depends on the existence and strength and 
 good sense of this educated middle class ; and the 
 larger it is in comparison with the privileged class 
 on the one side and the destitute class on the other, 
 both more or less unproductive and both more or 
 less drawbacks to the freedom of the state, the 
 better it is for the whole nation. 
 
 The work of the American missionaries has been 
 to produce an educated middle class in the Turkish 
 lands ; and they have done it with a success that 
 implies both good method in their work and good 
 raw material to work upon. I have come in contact 
 with men educated at Robert College in widely 
 separate parts of the country, men of diverse races 
 and different forms of religion, Greek, Armenian 
 (Gregorian), and Protestant ; and have everywhere 
 been struck with the marvellous way in which a 
 certain uniform type, direct, simple, honest, and 
 lofty in tone, had been impressed on them. Some 
 had more of it, some less ; but all had it to a certain 
 degree ; and it is diametrically opposite to the type 
 produced by growth under the ordinary conditions 
 of Turkish life. 
 
 Now, let me give a few specimens taken at 
 random among the Protestants with whom I have 
 come into relations. In 1884, in a khan at Afiom- 
 Kara-Hissar, where we stayed a day, an Armenian 
 
228 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 came up and entered into conversation in English. 
 His English was not perfectly correct, nor did he 
 speak it with ease ; but it was really remarkable 
 that he should have picked it up so well with his 
 slender opportunities. He told me that he was a 
 Protestant, related some part of his history (which 
 I cannot remember), and inquired carefully about 
 the means of getting out to America. He was a 
 watchmaker ; but, as he said, there was no trade 
 and no possibility of getting work or earning money 
 in Turkey. America, where the missionaries came 
 from, was the goal of his ambition. His appearance 
 and manner reminded me much of a decent, steady 
 Scotch shopkeeper, rather slow, respectably edu- 
 cated, taking a fairly wide interest in the world, 
 making the best of his opportunities, and with a 
 shrewd eye to the main chance : not a lofty type 
 of nature, but a good average man, indicating a 
 strong and healthy stock, from which would spring 
 many others of the same vigorous mould. 
 
 Again, in a remote village, on the site of Comana, 
 buried in a glen of the Anti-Taurus, I met in 1 890 
 a young Armenian pastor, on a round of inspection 
 of the stations in his district. Meeting him ac- 
 cidentally and unawares in the squalid street of that 
 mud-built village, I felt, as he approached, the air 
 of education and refinement and high purpose which 
 belonged to him. He had been trained first at the 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 229 
 
 College of Aintab, and afterwards at a Theological 
 Seminary in America. Naturally, his superior op- 
 portunities placed him on a much higher intellectual 
 level than most of the other persons whom I refer to 
 in this chapter. It is incidents like that accidental 
 meeting in a dark country, which bring home to 
 one's mind the power that education and unselfish 
 aims and lofty ideas exert to ennoble the mind and 
 look of man, surrounding him as it were with a 
 light from heaven. And when I think that it is men 
 of that stamp who have been the object most aimed 
 at in the recent persecution, and have been given 
 over to the vulgar town -mobs to batter to death 
 with bludgeons, or to slay by torture and mutilation, 
 I can hardly continue my round of work in my own 
 country. My own personal liking, and gratitude for 
 help received, are far greater to the Turkish villagers 
 than to the Armenians ; but a character and purpose 
 like those of that young Armenian are so far above 
 the Turkish level as to be inconceivable even to the 
 best of them. 
 
 As the next example I shall take an Armenian, 
 who was not in communion with the American 
 missionaries, the founder and first head of a new 
 Protestant Armenian Church. As he was, or is 
 (I know not if he escaped the recent massacre), a 
 noteworthy type, I shall quote two accounts of 
 him, written independently, and giving very differ- 
 
230 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 ent estimates of the man. The first is taken from 
 Mr. Barkley's interesting and instructive book, l 
 in which he mentions " the native Armenian 
 pastor, ' an honourable man/ which means, in the 
 language of Kaisari, a man of some social standing. 
 We were evidently expected to be greatly im- 
 pressed by him . . . though I cannot say either 
 his appearance or manners were very prepossessing. 
 He was a short, dark man, with bushy whiskers 
 and beard that were pushed forward in a fringe in 
 front of his face by high though somewhat flabby 
 stand-up collars ; his dress was a parody on that 
 of an English clergyman. . . . He told us he had 
 visited Scotland for the purpose of collecting 
 money for a Church, and had been very successful 
 there. ... He abused the Turks a little, but he 
 abused the Catholic and other Armenians very 
 much more. . . . Altogether his conversation did 
 not make any lasting impression on us beyond a 
 general conviction that, if the Turks were removed 
 out of the way for a short time, the three de- 
 nominations of Christians would cut each other's 
 throats." 
 
 Like everything else that Mr. Barkley says 
 about Turkey, this is a picture sketched from the 
 life, vivid and real. But it gives only the superficial 
 
 1 A Ride through Asia Minor, p. 153. 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 231 
 
 impression of an evening visit. There is no ex- 
 planation suggested why the pastor was " an hon- 
 ourable man," or why educated and polished Ameri- 
 cans expected that he should make a " great im- 
 pression " on English strangers; when one asks these 
 questions, one sees that there must surely have been 
 more in the native pastor than appears in the very 
 unprepossessing picture (the most repellent parts 
 of which I have omitted). But readers generally 
 will treat the picture as a complete account of 
 "an honourable man" in Kaisari. The fact that 
 European clothes are a sad trial to the Oriental, 
 whether Turk or Armenian, and that he never feels 
 at home in them, is correctly appreciated and 
 brought out in his own vivid way by Mr. Barkley. 
 It is often worse among the Europeanised Turks. 
 The use of buttons is hard for the Turk to learn ; 
 he looks on them as mere ornaments ; and the con- 
 sequences are sometimes rather startling. Even the 
 most Oriental of Armenians who adopts European 
 costume has made himself master of the buttons, 
 but the relation between collar and shirt sometimes 
 evades him ; and Mr. Barkley brings out the con- 
 sequences at considerable length, and with perfect 
 accuracy. But there was much in the native pastor 
 more worthy of note than the hiatus visible at 
 times between his collar and his shirt. In the 
 Scotsman, 4th Nov., 1882, I tried to describe what 
 
232 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 seemed to me remarkable in the man ; and I may 
 here quote verbatim what was there printed, nine 
 years before Mr. Barkley's book was published, 1891. 
 " In Kaisari of Cappadocia we found the most 
 interesting of these Protestant communities. It 
 was not connected with the American mission, and 
 the pastor had belonged from his infancy to the 
 Protestant Church. He had been educated at one 
 of the American schools, and had afterwards come 
 to Edinburgh, where he attended divinity classes. 
 We lived in his house for a week l and found it most 
 cool and pleasant in the heat of July. The church 
 was built beside the house ; both were constructed 
 with money contributed chiefly in Edinburgh, and 
 both did great credit to the architectural skill of 
 the workmen of Kaisari. The pastor had for- 
 gotten most of his English, but he had evidently 
 profited by his visit to a civilised country. He has 
 organised his little church in accordance with the 
 Turkish law, and has thus given it a legal footing in 
 the land. The principle of the law is that a religious 
 body can be recognised only through its head ; the 
 Government allows complete freedom to every re- 
 ligion, but requires that the Church shall have a head, 
 through whom all communications between the 
 Government and the Church take place. The pastor 
 
 1 The military Vice-Consul at Kaisari had rented it from the 
 pastor. 
 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 233 
 
 got his church officially recognised as the Armenian 
 Protestant Church ; he is the head of this Church 
 throughout the Turkish Empire. He is a member 
 of the Medjliss (Local Government Council), and 
 has the legal right to nominate a head over his own 
 church in every district of the Empire ; the man 
 whom he nominates has then a seat in the Govern- 
 ment Council of his district. This stroke of policy 
 may have important consequences in the future 
 history of this district, as it relieves the members of 
 this body from some difficulties that beset the 
 American Protestants." 
 
 As to the pastor's work on the Medjliss, Dr. 
 Farns worth gave me, as characteristic of the man, 
 an account of the way in which he made his mark, 
 and became a person of weight in the city. The 
 Pasha was bent on carrying through a stroke of 
 the usual policy, much to his own benefit, but 
 advantageous to no one else. He required that 
 the members of the Council should sign a docu- 
 ment, which he wanted in carrying out his policy. 
 He explained what he desired, and made it clear 
 that he was determined to have it ; and, of course, 
 he had privately arranged with some of the 
 members to set the example of signing. The 
 document reached the pastor : he declined to sign 
 it. They pressed him by argument, by threats of 
 danger, by showing that no interest of his own was 
 
234 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 affected by the Pasha's policy, and by hints of ad- 
 vantage to be gained, if he signed. He steadily 
 declined to put his signature to a document, which 
 he knew to be false. The Pasha was furious, but 
 he could not venture to carry through his policy in 
 the face of this action, and the document was with- 
 drawn. To us it seems a creditable thing ; but those 
 who know how the Armenians have been brought 
 up to cringe before a Pasha from fear of death, will 
 find something heroic in the pastor's conduct, 
 sacrificing his own private advantage to the 
 interests of truth and the public welfare, and they 
 will overlook the hiatus between his collar and his 
 shirt, lest the saying about the hero and his valet 
 be applied to them. 
 
 The skill and the initiative shown by the Protes- 
 tant pastor at Kaisari in suiting his plans to, and 
 taking advantage of, the law as it existed were all 
 the more striking when one observed the situa- 
 tion in which the missionary congregations were 
 placed. In this respect there is an interesting 
 analogy between them and the position of the 
 earliest Christians in the Roman Empire. In both 
 cases the state law demanded that the organisation, 
 if officially recognised, should have a distinct head 
 both as a whole and in each separate part, through 
 whom it might communicate with the government. 
 In both cases it was difficult to comply with such 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 235 
 
 a requirement, for there was not a distinct and 
 single head of the organisation. The analogy can- 
 not here be pursued in detail, as qualifications and 
 chronological variations come in ; but it is an 
 interesting repetition of history. The Turkish 
 Empire is the representative of the Roman Empire, 
 the Armenian mission has many points of resem- 
 blance to the primitive Church. Moreover, the 
 missionaries would have one serious difficulty in 
 appointing either a supreme head, or heads of the 
 local parts, apart from the fact that such a system 
 is inconsistent with American congregational organi- 
 sation. The Turkish law could not recognise any 
 head (whether really so or only nominated as a 
 representative) who was not a Turkish subject ; 
 but even if a foreign man * were willing to become 
 a Turkish subject, it is impossible, being expressly 
 forbidden by the capitulations regulating foreign 
 relations with the Empire. 
 
 The tedious intervention of consuls and am- 
 bassadors must often be employed by the mission- 
 aries, when a constituted head might deal directly 
 with the Imperial Government. I know from friends, 
 who have had a large stake in Turkey, that the 
 slowest and most uncertain way of getting anything 
 
 1 Women could become Turkish subjects ; and, at the time 
 when foreigners could not themselves hold landed property in 
 Turkey, they often held it in their wife's name. 
 
236 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 from the Porte would be by setting in motion con- 
 sular and ambassadorial machinery. On this sub- 
 ject, however, least said, soonest mended ; though 
 many stories might be told. 
 
 Mr. Barkley, in the work just referred to, gives 
 a very unfavourable account of the Armenian 
 Protestants ; and, undoubtedly, it cannot be denied 
 that members of the body could be found, whose 
 character and motives were no better than his 
 description. But my deliberate opinion is that he 
 applies to the whole body language which is true 
 only of the worst specimens ; and the conduct of 
 the Protestants during the recent years of massacre 
 emphatically and triumphantly disproves his esti- 
 mate of them. The truth seems to me to be that 
 Mr. Barkley could not stand the welcome which 
 they gave him, as he arrived at Kaisari, when a 
 band of about sixty Protestants were on the outlook 
 to receive him outside the city " old men, middle- 
 aged men, boys, small and great, and even quite 
 little children " who all saluted him as a " Brodder". 
 They escorted him to the mission-house, "all 
 showing plainly by their scared look that they 
 expected to be kicked a little by every Turk they 
 met " ; but nothing worse befell them in the streets 
 than a chorus of "Giaours" and unquotable curses 
 of the Turkish style. 
 
 It is, certainly, not pleasant to be saluted as 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 237 
 
 "brothers" by persons unknown and unprepos- 
 sessing in appearance, who slink terrified of Turks 
 through the streets. Such familiar forms of address 
 do not accord with English ideas and manners, and 
 are to us, as a rule, either ridiculous or disgusting a 
 fact which the Socialists would be wise to recognise. 
 But other men, other manners ! Mr. Barkley per- 
 haps was possessed of an unfortunately fraternal 
 appearance ; and hence his sad experience which 
 evidently he could not forget or pardon. I have 
 never been saluted as "Brodder" by any Ar- 
 menian (though sometimes a Greek workman, 
 after a certain amount of acquaintance, has slid 
 into the address "adelphe"); but I suppose that I 
 have not so captivating a manner and look as my 
 predecessor in travel. 
 
 The missionaries have, perhaps, made a mistake 
 in creating a system too rigid and inelastic. They 
 sometimes, perhaps, aim at making their converts 
 into American Congregationalists, which seems to 
 me unsuitable to the Armenian character and cir- 
 cumstances. The true Armenian Protestantism 
 should adapt itself more readily to the Armenian 
 prepossessions. For example, Armenians have a 
 prejudice that a church ought to have a dome ; 
 the pastor at Kaisari recognised this and built 
 accordingly, and, as I think, rightly. But the 
 missionaries hardly accommodate themselves enough 
 
238 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 
 
 to the pet conceptions of the nation. If the Ar- 
 menians think that a particular architectural form 
 is conducive to the sacredness of a building, it 
 is, surely, advisable to humour them. It seems 
 not at all necessary or wise to teach them that 
 every one of their little prejudices is false and 
 wrong. But I am loath to criticise with inadequate 
 knowledge persons whose work I admire so much 
 as that of the American missionaries. 
 
 It is regrettable that Mr. Barkley, after enjoy- 
 ing the cordial hospitality of an American mis- 
 sion family for a week, should think it right to 
 print such an estimate of their ways as he does on 
 p. 152. "The missionaries in their zeal for their 
 work even lay aside self-respect, and I think I am 
 justified in saying so, for a man such as our host, 1 
 must have lost much of his before he could patiently 
 submit to seeing his pretty, refined young wife 
 subjected to such indignities." It is unjustifiable 
 to live in a man's house and then speak of him like 
 this. The host had a different conception of duty 
 from his guest ; but the guest seems wholly blind 
 to the fact that it was a thousand times harder for 
 the missionary to submit to the insult offered to 
 his wife than to turn his own cheek to the smiter. 
 He chose his cross, and bore it ; but, though neither 
 
 1 The name, Mr. S., is given in full. 
 
AND THE ARMENIAN PROTESTANTS 239 
 
 Mr. Barkley nor I could choose it, yet I can in a 
 sense admire the patience which I could not show, 
 and he should refrain from joining with those 
 Armenians whom he reprobates in insulting his 
 host. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY. 
 
 IT would be vain and self-contradictory to try to 
 describe the general type and national characteristics 
 of the Greeks in Turkey. Those who are called 
 Greeks are a religion, not a nation. They have 
 nothing in common except the creed and ceremonial 
 of the Orthodox Church. They have not the tie 
 of common blood, but are the direct descendants 
 of the most diverse races, Cappadocians, Pisidians, 
 Isaurians, Pamphylians, men of Pontus, and so on. 
 Their outward look and their superficial character 
 (for I do not pretend to have seen more deeply) are 
 often markedly divergent. They are divided by 
 difference of language : some use Greek alone, some 
 Turkish alone, many are bilingual. One sees Greek 
 Orthodox churches in the eastern part of Turkey, 
 over whose door is an inscription in Greek letters ; 
 but when you read the words inscribed you find 
 that they are Turkish, and on inquiry you learn 
 that not a soul in the congregation knows any 
 Greek except the priest. It is a remarkable fact 
 
 that the Orthodox Church should have been able to 
 (240) 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 24! 
 
 bind so well together elements so diverse, and now 
 for centuries so far divided from one another by the 
 estranging sea of Mohammedanism, in which their 
 scattered communities are like islets. 
 
 Perhaps, however, it is the distance between them 
 that prevents the racial differences from being felt 
 by the various sections of the Orthodox Church. 
 The lines of tribal difference of old were very 
 clearly and strongly felt by all Greeks ; and 
 lonians never loved Dorians, though they might 
 unite in presence of the Barbarian. Not even the 
 levelling and unifying effect of the Church could 
 produce fraternal feeling between different races 
 that acknowledged the one true Church ; and, if 
 they were close together, perhaps even now we 
 should observe the old dislike, a trace of which we 
 see in the occasional expressions of contempt for 
 Galatians in the writings of the Cappadocian Saint 
 Basil. A friend told me of a Greek village in 
 Macedonia, where there were some outsiders from 
 the north, not enough to have a church of their 
 own : these attended the rites of the Greek church, 
 and the congregation in its two sections was ad- 
 dressed by the priest as " Christian Brethren, and 
 ye Wallachians ". 
 
 Hamilton mentions " that both in Trebizond and 
 the neighbouring mountains are many Greek Turks 
 
 or Turkish Greeks, a race of people who are in 
 
 16 
 
242 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 reality Christians, and observe the Greek rites in 
 secret ; but who from prudential motives, profess 
 the state religion of Mohammedanism, submit to 
 be circumcised, attend the mosques, and practise 
 all the other ceremonies enjoined by the Moham- 
 medan religion " (L, p. 240). Sir Charles Wilson, 
 who knows Asia Minor and Armenia better than 
 almost any other living man, does not mention this 
 class of secret Christians : they have now ceased to 
 be under the necessity of practising this sham 
 Mohammedanism, since a degree of toleration was 
 encouraged by the policy of Mahmud, Abd-ul- 
 Medjid, and Abd-ul-Aziz, and the European con- 
 suls were a great protection to the Christians until 
 within the last few years. The nearest approach 
 that I have observed to this pretended Moham- 
 medanism was among Albanians. In 1891, 1 had 
 an Albanian servant, who, as I learned after I had 
 engaged him, was a Christian. Had I known in 
 time, I should not have taken him ; but his Christi- 
 anity sat as light on him as Mohammedanism 
 does on Albanians of the northern districts ; he 
 never acknowledged, even to my wife and me, that 
 he was a Christian ; and he occasionally attended 
 service in the village mosques. The Mohamme- 
 dans, however, were very suspicious of him, 
 which he explained to my wife by the fact that he 
 wore black clothes. In other cases, too, I have 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 243 
 
 noticed the utter indifference that Albanians have 
 to Mohammedan ceremonial. In October, 1891, an 
 Albanian servant of ours, feeling annoyed by a 
 ragged and dirty Turk who had begun to say his 
 prayers in the Oda, interrupted his devotions by 
 giving him a blow with the butt-end of a gun, and 
 then kicked him out and in derision threw after 
 him the little carpet on which he had been praying. 
 I was so interested in observing how far the Al- 
 banian would go that I did not interfere, as I 
 usually did, to prevent any quarrelling between my 
 men and the natives. 
 
 The Cappadocian Greeks are an interesting 
 people, who have been described by the older 
 German traveller Mordtmann (father of the present 
 active and able physician -archaeologist of Constan- 
 tinople) and by the Greek Karolides, in papers that 
 are unfortunately buried in periodicals inaccessible 
 to most people. Cappadocia passed with hardly a 
 struggle into the hands of the Seljuk Turks imme- 
 diately after 1070, and hence it suffered little from 
 war. The Greeks of the cities, such as Kaisari, 
 Nigde, or Bor, forgot their Greek, until the revivifi- 
 cation of the western spirit in the last generation 
 produced a revival of the language. But the 
 Greeks of the villages have retained their native 
 language to the present day ; and it is an interesting 
 tongue, very difficult to understand for one who, 
 
244 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 like me, had been trained in the Greek of the 
 ^Egean lands. Monsieur Karolides has published 
 a work on this Greek dialect. 
 
 The people seemed to share in the rather sus- 
 picious temperament of the Armenian villagers, so 
 far as my scanty experience goes. It was not so 
 easy to get into pleasant relations with them as 
 with the western Greeks, which was doubtless due 
 partly to the fact that I could not catch what 
 they said, for whereas they understood my Greek 
 with perfect ease, their pronunciation concealed 
 from me what they said in reply. But tempera- 
 ment, separation from the rest of the Greek world, 
 and burial among the surrounding mass of Turks, 
 had much to do with their want of cordiality to 
 strangers, and their obvious dread of any person 
 new to them. 
 
 The Greek Cappadocian villages are usually large 
 and well-built, and have an appearance of comfort 
 and wealth that contrasts remarkably with the 
 poverty and wretchedness of the Mohammedan 
 villages. Almost all the energy and progress 
 visible in these regions lie among the Christians. 
 Many of the villages make much use of rock-cutting 
 in their domestic arrangements. At Hassa-Keui 
 (the old bishopric of Sasima to which Basil con- 
 secrated the reluctant Gregory), Melegob (Mala- 
 kopaia), etc., every house has an underground story 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 245 
 
 cut out of the soft rock that underlies the soil of 
 the level fertile plain. Narrow passages connect 
 the underground chambers belonging to each house, 
 and longer but equally narrow passages run from 
 house to house. A big solid disc of stone stands 
 in a niche, outside each underground house, ready 
 to be drawn forward in front of the door at any 
 alarm. 
 
 Other villages use the rocks of the hillsides, of 
 which Gelvere (the old Karbala, the estate inherited 
 by Gregory of Nazianzos) may serve as one out of 
 many specimens. It is situated in a narrow rocky 
 glen, which is from end to end a mass of rock-cut 
 chambers, cells, churches and houses. The pros- 
 pect down the glen from the upper end is mar- 
 vellously quaint and fantastic : the soft rocks have 
 been worn into odd shapes by the weather : the 
 rock cuttings add to the curious appearance : the 
 modern houses, well built of cut blocks of the same 
 stone, can hardly be distinguished from the actual 
 hillside. 
 
 The people of these districts of Cappadocia are 
 described as Troglodytes by Byzantine historians : 
 and the custom of dwelling in the rocks or below 
 the ground undoubtedly goes back to time im- 
 memorial ; but we could not find any cuttings that 
 were demonstrably pre-Christian. 
 
 At one village the water was got from wells, 
 
246 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 which we ascertained to be about 300 feet deep. A 
 cumbrous, rude, quaint contrivance was used, where- 
 by the united strength of four women drew up a 
 tiny bucket. I timed them, and found that about 
 forty-five seconds were required for the ascent of a 
 bucket. 
 
 At one of these villages we were mistaken for 
 the Bishop of Kaisari, who was expected on a 
 pastoral visitation. It happened that we came by 
 the same road and reached the village about the 
 time that the bishop was expected. Most of the 
 population was gathered to welcome him ; and the 
 priests with a choir of boys headed the procession 
 that was coming forth to meet him and welcome 
 him. Suddenly we rounded a rocky corner of the 
 narrow road, and came within view of the pious 
 band about forty yards distant. Strangers are 
 rare in this corner of Cappadocia ; and the eager 
 villagers at once concluded that we were the bishop's 
 party. The choir struck up a hymn, the priests 
 made various motions with their hands, and every- 
 body raised his voice in welcome. The situation 
 was embarrassing to our humility ; and the expla- 
 nation was not easy to make without embarrassing 
 the villagers. Fortunately we saw a curious 
 monument in a rock to the left of the road, so we 
 went off to examine it, making as if we observed 
 nothing. The shouting ceased, the priests stood 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 247 
 
 motionless, the choir stopped voice by voice. I 
 never learned what they thought of us, nor whether 
 they recovered their voices in time to welcome the 
 bishop. 
 
 The contrast between the condition of the clergy 
 in the Armenian and in the Greek Church may be 
 illustrated by the two bishops of the region round 
 Kaisari. The Armenian bishop has been briefly 
 described on p. 217. In our interview with the 
 Greek bishop, German was the medium of com- 
 munication, for the bishop spoke that language 
 with ease. He was a man of information, wide 
 experience, and great business capacity, and had 
 been one of the representatives of the Greek 
 Church at the conference, which was held, if I 
 rightly remember, in Bonn, to discuss the scheme 
 of union between the English and Greek Churches, 
 favoured by Canon Liddon and some other members 
 of the English Church. As we were talking with 
 the bishop I pictured to myself how the man of 
 Kaisari would be sure to accept with grace and 
 real pleasure every concession made by the English 
 representatives, but when any concession was 
 asked on his side, would politely and suavely ex- 
 plain that it was impossible for the " Orthodox 
 Church " to swerve a hair's breadth from the Ortho- 
 dox Faith. He made on me the impression that 
 the Orthodox Faith was to him a matter more of 
 
248 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 enthusiastic pride than of real religious conviction ; 
 but I may be wronging him, for one cannot gauge 
 a man's whole character in an hour's conversation. 
 Undoubtedly his interest lay in the direction of 
 affairs and the modern world of politics, not in 
 that of ancient history or the Church Fathers 
 (towards which all the talk had been directed, 
 when in 1880 I was conversing in Greek, not 
 German, with the Bishop of Aidin in the Maeander 
 valley). We did not tell the Bishop of Kaisari 
 how we had been mistaken for him, which was an 
 unfortunate omission. I should like to know how 
 he would have taken it. 
 
 It is probable that the two bishops of Kaisari 
 are extreme representatives in opposite directions 
 of their respective Churches. Some of my friends 
 have taken exception to my statement in the Con- 
 temporary Review, September, 1896, p. 446, about 
 the extremely debased condition of the Armenian 
 Church ; but it seems not unfair to write rather 
 strongly, when such a marked contrast between the 
 two corresponding dignitaries at such an important 
 city as Kaisari came before one's notice ; for in the 
 episcopal system, such bishops imply much about 
 their Churches. In the Byzantine hierarchy, the 
 Bishop of Kaisari (Exarch of the Pontic Dioecesis) 
 always ranked first after the Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 249 
 
 A contrast is frequently drawn between the grasp- 
 ing nature of the Greek and the generosity of 
 the Turk. So far as my experience goes this con- 
 trast is often much exaggerated. I have had more 
 difficulties in bargaining with Turks, especially when 
 I was new to their ways, than I ever had with 
 Greeks, and found them in a small way quite as 
 grasping as any Greeks are. The same persons 
 who will entertain the traveller very hospitably, 
 following the hereditary custom without thought 
 and without deliberate choice, will often try as 
 hard as the most grasping Greek or Armenian 
 to extort an exorbitant price from him, if it comes 
 to be any question of a bargain. In such cases 
 there is this great difference between the Greek and 
 the Turk or Turkmen : the former has some con- 
 ception of the comparative value of things, and 
 is therefore easier to deal with on a uniform scale, 
 but the latter is often ignorant of the relative value 
 of money and commodities, and may sell his eggs 
 and milk absurdly dear or ridiculously cheap. It is 
 therefore too difficult for the archaeological tra- 
 veller to carry out his own ideas of right and fair pay- 
 ment. Very often his resolve to pay for everything 
 may lead only to dispute and almost to quarrelling ; 
 and in 1881 my attempt to deal with the villagers 
 on the principle of fair trade made that journey a 
 scene of frequent bickering. In one case my servant 
 
250 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 was asked a sum equivalent to six shillings and 
 eightpence for a dish of kaimak (thick clotted cream) ; 
 and when he appealed to me against this imposition 
 there was a tremendous scene of clamour and com- 
 plaint. I have known a whole Turkmen camp (and 
 Turkmens as a rule are exceedingly hospitable) 
 refuse to sell a pot of milk lower than about six 
 times the price of milk in London ; and yet flocks 
 by the thousand were round the camp. As a whole 
 my experience is that you will save much trouble, 
 and will leave the village much better pleased, if 
 you avoid rousing their expectations of payment ; 
 try as far as possible to arrive with few wants 
 (bringing with you some articles from a previous 
 camp), claim these as a matter of hospitality 
 (rewarding the givers by bakshish , not by formal 
 payment), and purchase at the last some things for 
 the next camp. The instinct to trade and to haggle 
 and to extort is just as real in the Turk as in the 
 Greek ; but in the former it is often dormant, 
 owing quite as much to pure ignorance as to real 
 generosity. I have experienced, proportionately, 
 at least as much kindness and generosity and 
 hospitality among Greek villagers as among Turks ; 
 but, as it happens, I have stayed at a hundred 
 times as many Turkish villages as at Greek. 
 
 Among the richer Greeks the archaeologist, if 
 he shows any affability and Hellenism, will always 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 251 
 
 find the most cordial welcome, lavish hospitality, 
 and zealous co-operation in all his schemes of ex- 
 ploration. No words can be too strong to de- 
 scribe their kindness to me. Naturally, if one is 
 stuck-up and standoffish in his manner, he is not so 
 welcome. My lot, however, has lain so much more 
 among the Turks, that I have not often come 
 into relations with Greeks since 1881. 
 
 While there is singularly little diversity of opinion 
 about the Armenians, there exists extraordinary 
 contradiction between the opinions entertained 
 about the Greeks by competent observers of long 
 experience. To take two examples out of many, 
 I may give the testimony of two persons, British 
 by nationality, both possessing long and intimate 
 acquaintance with business in Turkey, and deserv- 
 ing as well as holding a leading position in it. 
 One of them, Scottish by birth and training, could 
 hardly contain himself if the name of Greek was 
 mentioned in his hearing, and could not restrain 
 himself from abusing the whole people as knaves 
 and cheats : on the other hand he was in the closest 
 business relations with Armenians, and I never 
 heard him say a word against them as a class. 
 The other person, born and trained in the country, 
 and controlling a business that brought him into 
 relations with many Greek firms in various parts 
 of the country, declared to me often that he had 
 
252 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 never found the slightest difficulty in dealing with 
 his Greek correspondents, that he had not been 
 cheated nor deceived by them, that he never found 
 it necessary to enter into formal written contracts 
 with them as was the practice with English firms, 
 but a word spoken on each side was accepted and 
 loyally carried out by both. 
 
 The opinion of a stranger about the Greeks of 
 western Asia Minor would be strongly affected 
 according as he came in contact with one or the 
 other of these two excellent authorities. Which 
 are we to believe ? 
 
 For my own part, I think the second is nearer 
 the truth, provided you remember that much de- 
 pends on the tone and spirit in which you deal 
 with the Greeks. In the East, business has rapidly 
 changed from the native system, in which every 
 small bargain was a contest of skill between two 
 single adversaries, each of whom tried to out- 
 manoeuvre the other, to the European system. 
 The morality of business in England is said 
 not to be so very high, at least in some depart- 
 ments ; and it is believed that one cannot safely 
 accept every representation, made even by respon- 
 sible and respectable boards of directors, as to the 
 state of the enterprises in which they ask the 
 public to invest money. Naturally, the traders 
 of the East are influenced a great deal by the 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 253 
 
 general tone of the firms with which they are 
 brought in contact : expect them to act as cheats, 
 show them clearly that you expect it, and you are 
 not likely to be disappointed. 
 
 But there is another side to the case, and, though 
 I went out well primed with advice to distrust the 
 Greeks, to be always on my guard against being 
 cheated, to regard every one as a knave, I found 
 it unprofitable and unnecessary as time went on 
 to dread such bad treatment, and easier, as well 
 as safer, to deal with them in a different spirit. 
 Of course, you must keep your wits about you 
 and your eyes open ; you will find consummate 
 scoundrels among the Greeks (just as you may, 
 without the help of Democritus's candle, find them 
 among the Scotch or the English), and you must 
 in all three nations discriminate and select. But 
 it is, of course, harder to discriminate between men 
 of a strange race, and the foreigner is liable to fall 
 into mistakes on this score which the native would 
 avoid. But it is as unfair to condemn all Greeks, 
 because you may be cheated in your first business 
 arrangement, as it would be to say that Jabez 
 Balfour is a typical and fair specimen of all British 
 company promoters. 
 
 I take one example of the necessity of under- 
 standing the men with whom you have to deal in 
 your wanderings. The few Greeks whom you meet 
 
254 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 in the purely Turkish country, where most of my 
 time was spent, are tradesmen or emissaries sent 
 out by Smyrniote dealers in antiquities. These do 
 not know the comparative value of coins, but they 
 are well aware that some coins are worthless, others 
 valuable, and a few invaluable ; and, in general, 
 when they show you a number of coins their object 
 merely is to find out which are the valuable ones. 
 If you make an offer for one or two, they infer that 
 these are good ; but they won't sell, for they are 
 certain that you are offering only a quarter or a 
 tenth of the real value, with the view of making a 
 big profit in Smyrna or in Europe. If you offered 
 them 10 or 50 for a bronze coin, they would 
 conclude that it was one of the great rarities, 
 and would resolve to demand ;ioo or 200 in 
 Smyrna. 
 
 This is a peculiarly aggravating way of dealing, 
 as well as bad business ; and you are apt to feel 
 angry and sore, as I have been more than once, 
 when a price far beyond the market value in 
 London was refused for a coin so worn that I could 
 not decipher it, which I wished to have because it 
 might prove decipherable with time and then afford 
 evidence regarding the name of the site where it 
 had been discovered. Then one feels inclined to 
 echo the dictum of a distinguished English archae- 
 ologist, who lived long in the yEgean lands, that a 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 255 
 
 Greek who had sold you a coin for four times its 
 value would be ready to hang himself with chagrin 
 if he found reason to think that he might have got 
 five times the value by a change of tactics. But you 
 must take men as you find them, and not be angry 
 because they are ignorant and suspicious. Their 
 suspicion springs to a great degree from their 
 ignorance ; and I think it is the same to some 
 extent with the English suspicion of Greeks. 
 They feel that they don't know the Greeks well 
 enough to estimate individual character, and dis- 
 trust all alike. 
 
 After I found out their ways, I never named a 
 price to these Greek emissaries ; for, when they 
 have gained their object in discovering which are 
 the more valuable coins, they often conceal them 
 forthwith, and won't permit you a second glance. 
 If there is any coin of interest, of which you wish 
 to make a note, you will be wise not to sort it out, 
 but to keep it along with the rest, and go on talking 
 in a general way ; meanwhile you can identify it, 
 and fix its description in your memory ; but as 
 soon as you begin to write down a description they 
 snatch the whole set away from you, for they 
 suspect that the value of the good coin will be 
 diminished, if it gets into your book. My friend, 
 the " Wandering Scholar,"" is troubled in conscience 
 at having once taken part in this method of acquir- 
 
256 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 ing knowledge l against the will of the owner ; 
 those who have any doubt as to the morality of 
 the act would be wise not to engage in it ; but my 
 view is clear that the crime is with him who allows 
 knowledge to be hid. 
 
 As might be expected the Greeks of the ^Egean 
 coast-lands approximate more in character to the 
 Greeks of Greece ; but they resemble not so much 
 the idle crowd that throngs every cafe in Athens 
 all day long, as the vigorous-looking members 
 who represent the country districts in the Boule. 
 Whether the resemblance holds true in regard to 
 those qualities which have always prevented the 
 Greeks from forming a strong nation and a strong 
 government, it would be hard to say. In Athens, 
 certainly, one feels that the modern Greeks, like the 
 ancient, have not yet learned to obey laws, and 
 therefore cannot make them. They are better and 
 more prosperous under almost any other govern- 
 ment than they are under their own. The old 
 jealousy and distrust which each district entertained 
 of its neighbours still reigns ; and each district 
 seems to devote more attention to preventing its 
 neighbours from getting an undue share of attention 
 and advantage than to forwarding its own interests ; 
 while all join in opposing the foreigner, and in 
 
 1 See p. 13 of his entertaining book. 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 257 
 
 preventing him from gaining anything out of them. 
 Thus Greece has not developed as it might have 
 done under a firm rule, which enforced obedi- 
 ence to a well-considered plan for the general 
 advantage. It has not been too fortunate in its 
 kings, for nothing good could come from Otho, 
 whom the Powers seem to have selected in a rough 
 practical joke, on the principle that anybody was 
 good enough for so small a kingdom as Greece ; 
 while the present king, though well-intentioned, 
 has not the firmness and vigour that would be 
 needed to make a mark in any department of 
 life. 
 
 What has been said about Turks and Greeks 
 points to the conclusion that a union of their 
 qualities is needed to make a strong and self- 
 sufficing nation. Each seems to possess some good 
 qualities which are lacking in the other. Take the 
 best among each race, and compare them. The 
 Greek can be brave, but you can never trust him to 
 die at his post or to fight to the bitter end in the 
 face of discouragement and despair. The Turk will 
 maintain his trust till he is cut in pieces, and will 
 stand at his post till he falls ; but he is devoid of 
 resource and ingenuity, and is hardly ever able to 
 command or to organise the strength of a number, 
 of other men, which the Greek can do. In every? 
 department of practical life, you want to have men) 
 
 17 
 
258 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 of both races on your staff; and it has always 
 seemed to me that " the Turks and the Greeks will 
 united make a happier country than either race 
 could by itself". So I wrote in 1890, and so I 
 still think. 
 
 Take the two great wants in the life of the 
 Turks, as they have been repeatedly brought out 
 in these pages. They receive no rational or 
 systematic training, whether moral or intellectual ; 
 but the strongest quality of the Greeks, and their 
 greatest achievement in the world, greater even 
 than their art, their poetry, or their science, has 
 been their love for education and their careful 
 provision for it in their cities. 1 The Turkish 
 women grow up in such circumstances as to dwarf 
 their intellectual faculties and to enfeeble or per- 
 vert their moral qualities, so that they are quite 
 unfit to communicate any proper bent and training 
 to their children's minds. The ancient population 
 of Asia Minor, on the contrary, gave an unusually 
 high position and influence to women ; * and it is 
 Mohammedanism that has destroyed the old re- 
 spect shown to them ; but among the Greeks, as I 
 have said, p. 49, the women of the peasant classes 
 seemed to me better than the men. 
 
 In union and amalgamation of the races, then 
 
 1 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., p. 440. 
 * Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 67, 403. 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 259 
 
 I 
 lies the hope of Asia Minor, and to that end all 
 
 the efforts of a wise government should be directed. 
 The country seems to me to be full of hope and 
 the promise of life and growth, and to contain all 
 the elements required for a vigorous and happy 
 race. The bar of religion stands in the way of 
 amalgamation ; but the example of the third cen- 
 tury shows that the bar is not indestructible. I 
 have pointed out elsewhere l how, under a govern- 
 ment that simply enforced quiet and order, the 
 two diametrically opposed religions, Christianity 
 and Paganism, flourished peacefully side by side, 
 and regulated their own mutual relations without 
 difficulty. Similar is the case at the present day, 
 wherever a vigorous governor or consul maintains 
 order and quiet, and holds the balance even. 
 That easy prosperous development in the third 
 century was ruined by the policy of massacre in 
 the period 303-312 A.D. ; and, after beginning in 
 recent time, it is again being destroyed by the 
 same means. 
 
 Postscript. 
 
 Mr. Curzon is reported to have stated in the 
 House of Commons on /th May, that if the Turkish 
 
 1 Cities and Bishoprics o/Phrygia, chapter xii. 
 
260 THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 
 
 troops were withdrawn from Candia, the result 
 would be a massacre compared with which those 
 in Armenia would sink into insignificance. Either 
 the prophecy proves marvellous and utter ignorance 
 of the character of those elements in the " Eastern 
 Question " which Mr. Curzon is, to some degree, 
 charged with the duty of conciliating towards one 
 another and pacifying, or it shows a magnificent 
 capacity for mis-stating facts so as to bamboozle 
 and hoodwink a public which looks to him for in- 
 formation. The statement is one which it would 
 be difficult to characterise in language that would 
 not be as brutal as the offending words. But it 
 would be disgraceful to let the statement pass with- 
 out challenge, and a protest ought to be made in 
 favour of a nation which, with many faults, has 
 never in its worst stage been given to mutilation 
 and orgies of personal outrage. When one must 
 be killed, one longs for a clean death and an un- 
 insulted corpse ; and, if either he or I have to face 
 massacre, we shall do well to pray that we fall into 
 the hands of Greek, not Turkish, rioters. It is 
 probable that Mr. Curzon's words, though reported 
 as his own, may be founded on the report of some 
 hysterical official at the scene of action. If that be 
 so, one begins to understand why the Cretans have 
 never been persuaded that Britain means well by 
 them, or is acting straight in the present business ; 
 
THE GREEKS IN ASIATIC TURKEY 26 1 
 
 and one hopes that the official may soon be en- 
 titled to honourable retirement, or that some 
 lucrative post may be created for him in Alaska or 
 Tierra del Fuego. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS IN ASIA 
 MINOR. 
 
 IN an interesting paper on "Turkish Guilds" in 
 the Fortnightly Review, December, 1896, Miss Con- 
 stance Sutcliffe comes forward to say a good word 
 for the Turks. Two institutions she mentions as 
 characteristic and interesting, the Janissaries and 
 the Trade Guilds in Constantinople. As she says, 
 on the Janissaries depended the morale of the whole 
 native army ; but it must be kept in mind that 
 the Janissaries in their original conception were a 
 corps of Christian children, taken young from their 
 parents, and trained up as Moslem warriors. It 
 was the Janissaries who furnished the Osmanli 
 Sultans with a standing army, trained and educated 
 from infancy for purposes of war, at a time when 
 no other state possessed a standing army of dis- 
 ciplined soldiers. But though this institution shows 
 the wit of its founder, it constitutes no proof of the 
 excellence of the Turkish race. 
 
 Again, the Trade Guilds are a most interesting in- 
 stitution, but they were not originated by the Turks. 
 
 (262) ' 
 
TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS. 263 
 
 They are merely one of the old social facts which 
 the Turks did not succeed in destroying. It seems 
 to me not to admit of doubt that these same 
 Guilds can be traced under the Roman Empire in a 
 Romanised form, and that their origin goes back 
 to time immemorial. They are an Anatolian in- 
 stitution, which has lasted under every form of 
 government. All over the country we find proof 
 of the existence under the Roman Empire of such 
 Guilds as that of the dyers, or the purple-dyers, 
 or the bakers, or the weavers of garments (these 
 were woven in a suitable shape, so that cutting 
 and tailoring was not nearly so much required as 
 in modern times), with a host of others. In several 
 cases it is obvious that the Guilds are of such 
 fundamental importance in the classification of 
 citizens and in the city organisation, that they 
 must be a primeval Anatolian institution, which 
 gave tone and direction to the growth of the Greek 
 or Roman city. 
 
 The reader will not desire here a statement of 
 the archaeological evidence (which those who wish 
 may find set forth at some length in the Cities and 
 Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., pp. 105 ff., 440, 471) ; but 
 there is not likely to be any disagreement among 
 educated observers that the modern Trade Guilds 
 are a mere broken-down and shadowy remnant of 
 the old pre-Turkish Guilds, possessing far less im- 
 
264 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 portance in the life of the nation than they formerly 
 did, because they are no longer so skilfully or- 
 ganised. 
 
 In the investigation of the social conditions that 
 underlie the " Eastern Question," this subject is 
 one of peculiar interest and importance. The 
 action of the Turks in every department of life has 
 simply been to ruin, never to rebuild. It is not 
 merely the cities, the buildings, and the govern- 
 ment of old Rome that they destroyed. Their 
 work was far more thorough and far more dan- 
 gerous. They destroyed the intellectual and moral 
 institutions of a nation ; they broke up and dis- 
 solved almost the entire social fabric ; they anni- 
 hilated every educative and humanising influence 
 in the land ; and they brought back great part of 
 the country to the primitive simplicity of nomadic 
 life. 1 There was left just enough of the ancient 
 institutions to make an Empire possible. Had 
 the nomadisation of Asia Minor been absolutely 
 complete, the nation would have been reduced to 
 a mere set of wandering tribes ; and out of mere 
 nomad tribes no articulated Empire can be built. 
 It is literally true that the Turkish Empire stands 
 on a pre-Turkish foundation, and is built up of 
 scraps and fragments of the ruined Roman insti- 
 tutions. Just as the Turkish villager lives in a 
 1 See p. 103. 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 265 
 
 house built by a Christian mason, if he has any- 
 thing better than a hut, and drinks water brought 
 in an aqueduct made by a Christian artisan ; l just 
 as the executive of Turkish administration could 
 not be kept up without ' 2 a staff of Christian sub- 
 ordinates to do such parts of the work as demand 
 a little education ; so, in general, there is hardly a 
 social institution in Asia Minor showing any degree 
 of legal or social constructiveness that is not an 
 older Anatolian creation, Moslemised in outward 
 form, and usually degraded in the process. 
 
 Even such simple associations for purposes of 
 social enjoyment and hospitality as that of " the 
 Brotherhoods," described by the Arab of Tangier, 
 Ibn Batuta, as characteristic of the Turkish cities 3 
 of Asia Minor in the fourteenth century, seem to 
 have been the survival of original Anatolian institu- 
 tions maintained in connection with the great 
 religious centres of earlier times, and preserved 
 under a Christianised form in the Byzantine period. 
 On this subject also I cannot here do more than 
 refer to the same work as before, pp. 96 ff., 359 f., 
 630. 
 
 The permanent association of religious awe with 
 certain places (usually marked by natural pheno- 
 
 1 See p. 22. 2 See p. 166. 
 
 3 He calls them "Turkmen," not " Turkish "; an interesting 
 point, see p. 101, 
 
266 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 mena, indicating the presence of divine power) is 
 an interesting subject, which shows what an inti- 
 mate connection exists between the modern Mo- 
 hammedans and the ancient population. The be- 
 lief in the divine presence was marked in earlier 
 time by reliefs on the rock or other works of art, 
 by a Greek temple or by a Christian church. At 
 the present time it is indicated, sometimes by a 
 tree hung with pieces of rag, fastened on it by 
 the superstition of modern devotees, sometimes by 
 a turbe, a sacred building which usually takes the 
 form of a small round edifice with a roof sloping 
 up to a central apex, surmounted by the crescent, 
 though various other forms occur, degenerating 
 into the meanest type. The contrast between the 
 stately ancient monument and the modern rag- 
 hung tree or common-place turbe is typical of the 
 degeneration of Asia Minor under the Turks. In 
 or underneath the turbe is a grave, in which a Dede 
 or heroised ancestor is buried or supposed to be 
 buried. Thus the religious awe of the locality is 
 connected with Mohammedan history or tribal 
 heredity ; but it is older by thousands of years 
 than the advent of Mohammedanism or of the tribe 
 in the country. So one finds in many parts of the 
 country places marked by the power or the grave, 
 sometimes of persons unknown to fame (or at least 
 unknown to me), such as Karaja Ahmed, Omar 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 267 
 
 Baba, Hadji Omar, or well-known historical per- 
 sonages, such as Hadji Bektash (a dervish from 
 Khorasan, who named and blessed the first Janis- 
 saries, led them at the assault of Mudania, I think, 
 and became their patron saint), or Seidi Ghazi 
 (Seid the Conqueror, who led the Saracen army 
 that was defeated at Akroenos l in A.D. 740). 
 Generally there is a belief that supernatural 
 powers of some kind or other are connected with 
 these turbes, e.g., that miraculous cures are effected 
 in them. 
 
 In other cases there is no visible sign of Moham- 
 medan belief, and yet the belief exists and is 
 powerful. Any Ayasma or holy spring to which 
 the Christians resort is also respected by the Mo- 
 hammedans, e.g., the spring of Hercules Restitutor 
 east of Apollonia, to which the Greeks of Olu-Borlu 
 go on an annual festival. The feast of St. Makrina 
 at Hassa-Keui (Sasima) in Cappadocia, attracts 
 not merely Christians but also Turks, who bring 
 their sick animals to be cured. In the Seljuk 
 country, certain springs are called after Iflatun 
 (Plato), a name that originated in the time before 
 Arab civilisation and study had completely died 
 out of the Mohammedan world. 
 
 A quaint and enigmatical remnant, descending 
 perhaps direct from pre-Christian times, is the 
 1 See p. 73 . 
 
268 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 Takhtaji (woodmen), whose scanty tribes are found 
 in widely scattered parts of the country, always in 
 remote hill-regions, difficult of access. It is hard 
 to gain trustworthy information about them, and 
 impossible to learn anything of their inner life and 
 beliefs. Outwardly they pose as Moslem, especi- 
 ally when they are obliged to come down to Mo- 
 hammedan villages for any purpose ; but it is 
 commonly said that they are ready to drink wine 
 and eat pork, have no mosques, and do not per- 
 form the five daily prayers. They are said to 
 hold secret meetings, and the same scandals with 
 regard to " Oedipodean unions " and horrid orgies 
 are reported about them as about the early 
 Christians. One authority, a Levantine of a well- 
 known and much respected family, assured me on 
 his own knowledge that they held meetings in their 
 cemeteries ; whereas others say that they meet in a 
 house. With regard to the latter form of the current 
 tale, Dr. Von Luschan pertinently observes that there 
 is never any building accessible to Takhtaji which 
 gives space for the occurrences that are related ; 
 and he explains the whole as mere lying exaggera- 
 tion of Turks, who are naturally revolted both by 
 their bad Mohammedanism and by the customs of 
 their women, who never veil and eat along with the 
 men. 
 
 The general opinion (to which almost all modern 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 269 
 
 observers, like the late Dr. C. Humann, Sir C. 
 Wilson, Dr. Von Luschan, etc., incline) is that 
 they have preserved a pre-Christian form of pagan 
 society and rites ; and that they are similar in this 
 respect to the Yezidi, Ansarieh, and other widely 
 scattered remnants of submerged peoples and be- 
 liefs. Their extreme secrecy makes it impossible 
 to affirm anything about them positively ; but Von 
 Luschan l vouches that in two cases he has positive 
 evidence of marriage, according to the old pagan 
 custom, between brother and sister among them 
 (which is one of the enormities related about them 
 by the Turks). They live in tents or in very 
 small, poor huts, and make a livelihood by cutting 
 wood (whence their name). 
 
 A new form of religion is the one gift of the 
 Turks to Asia Minor. I am by no means blind to 
 the good qualities that exist in Mohammedanism. 
 For tribes in a certain primitive stage of develop- 
 ment, it furnishes a more rapid and efficacious 
 means of improvement than, perhaps, any other 
 religion. But it carries them only to a certain 
 stage, and leaves them there inexorably fixed. 
 Mohammedanism was a reinvigoration of certain 
 Judaic and certain Christian ideas, adapted to a 
 people still for the most part in the nomadic stage ; 
 and it is bound fast within the rigid limitations 
 1 Reisen in Lykien, etc., Petersen and Von Luschan, ii., p. 199. 
 
270 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 of its original social environment. When a nation 
 of higher social development adopts Mohammedan- 
 ism, as the mass of the population of Asia Minor 
 did when it absorbed the Turkish (as distinguished 
 from the Turkmen) invaders into itself, the process 
 
 ! /is a distinct and fatal retrogression. A nation 
 cannot step backwards except in the direction of 
 intellectual degeneracy ; and, in social organisation, 
 the peoples of Asia Minor stepped backwards, 
 
 , when they became Mohammedan. 
 
 The inherent weakness and evil of Moham- 
 medanism lies in its want of any provision for 
 educating the young in the paths of citizenship. 
 But how could a religion that was adapted to a 
 nomadic people, initiate any progress or create any 
 machinery tending towards a more developed and 
 better articulated form of society ? In Turkey one 
 begins consciously to realise how much of Euro- 
 pean life and thoughts and ways springs out of the 
 educative influences which Christianity places round 
 the child from infancy, and which parents, however 
 much opposed to Christianity they may be, can 
 hardly avoid. A witness who has enjoyed the best 
 opportunities of observing and used them well, 
 who writes under the name of " A Consul's 
 Daughter and Wife," but does not thereby conceal 
 her identity from any that know Turkey, has de- 
 scribed the effect produced on the Turkish women 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 2/1 
 
 by the want of educative surroundings, or rather by 
 the atmosphere round them of filthy joke and talk 
 which constitute a continuous education towards 
 evil, and a continuous deteriorating influence on 
 character. A similar feature of village life has 
 been alluded to above, p. 41 ff., in reference to the 
 young men. 
 
 Further, I am not blind to the evil character of 
 Byzantine rule, and have done what I can to trace 
 the history of its benumbing influence on the popu- 
 lation of Asia Minor. It was the moral weakness, 
 the decay of education, and the growing rigidity 
 and want of adaptability of social institutions that 
 exposed the country defenceless to the Turks. 
 Any single city, like Philadelphia for example, 
 which was cut off from the enervating influence of 
 Byzantine administration and left free to develop 
 its own inherent strength and moral power in the 
 face of the enemy, could maintain for more than a 
 century its freedom and its institutions in the sur- 
 rounding sea of hostile Mohammedanism, until it 
 was reduced to surrender to the combined armies 
 of a Byzantine Emperor and a Turkish Sultan. 1 
 Similar was the history of the small Armenian state 
 of Zeitun, with its few thousands of a people, which 
 was a free unconquered country down till almost 
 yesterday. It has almost always been by the 
 
 1 John Palasologus II. and Murad (Amurath), 1379. 
 
272 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 strength or the skill of Christian allies that the 
 Turks have vanquished the Christians ; 
 
 But Turkish force and Latin fraud 
 Would break their shield, however broad. 
 
 And so it continues to be at the present day, when 
 German intellect is pointing the way to Turkish 
 victory over Greece. 
 
 It is perhaps the case, as some maintain, that 
 the introduction of the Angora goat, with its 
 beautiful silky fleece, into the country is due to 
 the nomads ; and, indubitably, the breeding and 
 keeping of these goats is to a considerable extent 
 in their hands. But it might be as reasonable to 
 maintain that the nomads brought the sheep into 
 the land, on the ground that they now have in their 
 hands most of the flocks. I should be disposed to 
 demand some better evidence, before accepting it 
 as a fact that the Angora goat was unknown to 
 ; the ancient inhabitants of the plateau. To take a 
 parallel case, it is certain that the glossy black 
 wool of the Laodicean sheep, and the violet-dark 
 wool of the sheep of Colossae, which are celebrated 
 under the Roman Empire and earlier, are no longer 
 produced. Pococke in the first half of the eight- 
 eenth century saw a great many black sheep ; 
 Chandler saw only a few black and glossy in the 
 early part of the present century ; my experience 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 273 
 
 agrees with Chandler's, except that I was not struck 
 with the gloss of the few black fleeces. It is 
 obvious that through carelessness the two breeds 
 have been allowed to degenerate and disappear. 
 The peculiar character of the fleeces was probably 
 maintained by some kind of cross-breeding, and 
 not, as some people have suggested, by any peculiar 
 property of the water or the grass. Similarly, in 
 the case of the Angora wool, a careful observer 
 who had had long experience in the trade, an 
 Englishman, whom I met at Angora in 1886, 
 assured me that the true secret of the peculiar 
 character of the fleece lay in the breeding. He 
 declared as a fact known to him that the beautiful 
 silky goats had to be crossed regularly both with 
 the common black and the red goats (twice 
 with the one kind, once with the other) in a 
 certain number of generations : I cannot trust my- 
 self to give his exact statistics. He asserted that 
 the reason why the Angora goat degenerated, when- 
 ever the attempt was made to naturalise it else- 
 where, was that the secret of breeding was unknown, 
 and the goats were kept studiously pure in breed, 
 instead of being strengthened by regular recurrence 
 to the fundamental stock. 
 
 I believe, therefore, that the breeding of the 
 Angora goat, the Laodicean sheep, and the Colos- 
 
 sian sheep, are secrets inherited by the Turks from 
 
 18 
 
274 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 the old people of Asia Minor. I have found two 
 inscriptions of Pessinus, mentioning gifts of tunics, 
 socks, etc., sent to the Emperor Trajan by a Gala- 
 tian lady : 1 the socks which she thought worth 
 sending to the Roman Emperor were probably 
 similar to those glossy beautiful socks of Angora 
 wool, which are still sold at Sivri-Hissar, 2 for she 
 would not send such articles, unless there were 
 something remarkable and unique about them. 
 
 One curious illustration of the continuity of 
 customs and ways from pre-Turkish time down to 
 the present day is furnished by St. Jerome. He 
 draws a contrast between the Arabs, who eat 
 locusts, and the natives of Phrygia or Pontus, who 
 would regard it as an unnatural thing if they were 
 forced to eat a locust 3 The same contrast im- 
 presses the traveller at the present day : the people 
 of Anatolia regard the locust, or the idea of eating 
 it, with horror, but the Arabs feed with relish on 
 locusts. Sir Charles Wilson pointed out this con- 
 trast to me many years ago. Now this aversion to 
 a food, which is declared to be perfectly whole- 
 some, is not likely to have been originally shared in 
 by the Turks, a barbarous people coming from a 
 country where food was scarce. This little trait 
 
 1 Still unpublished. 2 See p. 201. 
 
 3 " Compelle Phrygem et Ponticum ut locustam comedat, nefas 
 putabit," Adv. Jovin., ii., 7. 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 2/5 
 
 is typical of many, which force all the travellers 
 known to me, who have been most familiar with 
 Asia Minor, to the conclusion that the so-called 
 Turkish people of that country is fundamentally 
 the ancient Anatolian population, into which the 
 Turkish conquerors have melted, affecting it doubt- 
 less to some extent in the process, but disappearing 
 in it, while they affected it. 
 
 As I have begun to speak of locusts, this chapter 
 may be concluded by a few words about the periodi- 
 cal appearance of that scourge of the country, which 
 devastated Asia Minor for several years previous to 
 1882, and caused great suffering, and which came much 
 before our eyes in 1 880 and 1 88 1 . The belief through- 
 out the country is that the locusts die out after the 
 seventh year from natural causes ; and, certainly, 
 they were seen no more after 1882. The time when 
 they do most harm is when they are young, before 
 they develop wings. In the earlier stage they 
 march over the country in armies of incalculable 
 numbers, and leave behind them nothing green. 
 " The locusts have no king, yet they go forth all of 
 them by bands." In the years of the plague, you 
 might often ride across an army on the march. 
 They seemed, as a rule, to go in a column about 
 seventy to eighty yards broad or less ; but of the 
 length from van to rear I can give no estimate. 
 The sides of the column are as clearly defined as 
 
276 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 the flanks of a column of soldiers. Near Smyrna 
 I saw an army whose line of march happened for a 
 short distance to touch and coincide in direction 
 with a road : at that part the left half of the road 
 and the fields beside it were black with locusts, 
 while the right half had not a single locust on it. 
 No locust stops or swerves either to right or left, 
 but each marches by a series of jumps straight on, 
 till he finds something green to eat, which millions 
 devour in a few seconds ; while the rest pour on 
 over them, and the onward march is thus never 
 interrupted for a moment. If a wall or a house or 
 a city comes in their way, they go right over it, up 
 the one side and down the other. 
 
 When we were at Angora in 1881, the country 
 round, especially to the west and south, was 
 ravaged by them, and we rode across many armies 
 of them. In the city they swarmed in streets and 
 houses alike ; when you poured some water into 
 a tumbler to drink, out tumbled several locusts 
 from the porous terra-cotta jug in which for the 
 sake of coolness the water is kept ; when you 
 turned down the bed-clothes you disclosed a lot 
 of locusts ; when you felt something moving in your 
 sleeve or your trouser-leg, it was a locust. They 
 choked up the fountains and impeded the streams. 
 The British consul was active in promoting measures 
 against the scourge. The population of the country 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 
 
 was ordered out en masse against them. Every 
 village was required to give proof of having buried 
 a weight of locusts proportionate to the population. 
 When I mention, on the authority of the consul, 
 what the total result was, most people, I find, con- 
 sider that either the consul or I was competing 
 with Baron Munchausen: he declared that official 
 statistics showed a total weight of 1620 tons buried 
 in the province. All that I can say is that it would 
 be difficult to imagine that things could have been 
 worse, if the 1620 tons had been left alive. 
 
 Armies of locusts are always followed by the/ 
 locust-bird, a beautiful bird with bright and varied 
 plumage, which feeds upon them. It is never seen ; 
 in Asia Minor, except when the locusts are there. 
 
 When the locusts get wings they fly away, 
 alighting to feed in an erratic way at long inter- 
 vals. Thus the country is not devastated in such 
 a complete and continuous style. They fly, as I 
 have been assured by good observers, always 
 against the wind. I have only once seen an army 
 flying, and on that occasion the light of day was 
 darkened for a long time. It is said that near the 
 sea coast, if the wind sets in towards the land, the 
 locusts fly against it out to sea, drop in, and are 
 drowned in whole armies. In the summer of 1880, 
 I saw on the Ionian coast, near Erythrae, a con- 
 tinuous pile of dead locusts, near two feet high, 
 
278 TURKEY'S DEBT TO HER PREDECESSORS 
 
 along the edge of the sea for more than a mile, 
 as they had been washed up by the waves and 
 driven in by the steady sea-breeze that blows 
 every afternoon for hours. How far the pile ex- 
 tended I know not, as we turned away. The 
 stench was exceedingly disagreeable. 
 
 The belief throughout the country is that the 
 plague of locusts lasts only seven years, and then 
 stops. The year 1882 was, I think, only the 
 fifth year of the plague ; but it proved the last. 
 In Smyrna, in the middle of May, people were 
 already congratulating themselves on their deliver- 
 ance ; the locusts, after being born and beginning 
 their march in spring, in the usual way, seemed to 
 be affected by some kind of disease, and died in 
 myriads. It was said that their bodies were dis- 
 coloured ; but I cannot speak as an eye-witness 
 of this. I have never seen a locust again in any 
 part of the country. The question is worth con- 
 sideration, whether the disease is developed by 
 over-population : when the locusts are too crowded, 
 insanitary conditions are perhaps responsible for 
 the disease. If that be so, the active policy which 
 wars against the locusts and thins them out, would 
 really be a means of perpetuating the scourge ; and 
 the wise policy would be to let them increase as 
 rapidly as they tend to a triumph for the Turkish 
 system. It is certain that the locusts maintained 
 
IN ASIA MINOR 279 
 
 themselves in Cyprus for many years against all 
 the efforts of the British administration to exter- 
 minate them, whereas they soon died out in Asia 
 Minor. Those who are better informed on the 
 subject will probably be able to answer the ques- 
 tion that I have put. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS. 
 
 MANY hints to travellers are contained in the earlier 
 chapters ; and the following notes, while dealing 
 specially with the method of travelling usefully and 
 easily, may be found also to throw some light on 
 the people and the state of the country. 
 
 It is possible to travel with very various degrees 
 of equipment and following. In what is here said 
 on the subject, regard is had solely to the traveller 
 who aims at archaeological and topographical study, 
 and desires to do as much as possible in a short 
 time. I have experimented in various styles, and 
 the result is the two rules (i) take of luggage as 
 little as possible ; your happiness is inversely pro- 
 portionate to the amount that you have to pack 
 (unless you have a useful valet, an experiment which 
 I did not make) ; (2) any baggage should be sent 
 under charge of a servant, while the archaeologist 
 rides with one or more servants in quest of dis- 
 coveries. 
 
 As to baggage, it is worth while travelling in a 
 barbarous country to learn how unnecessary many 
 (280) 
 
TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 28 1 
 
 of the supposed " necessities " of life are. One or 
 more servants are an absolute necessity. It is 
 best to take at least one Mohammedan with you 
 everywhere ; my experiments occasionally with a 
 Christian servant only showed that the method 
 has some disadvantages. Especially in a city like 
 Afiom-Kara-Hissar, it is not advisable to go about 
 antiquity-hunting alone. In June, 1881, I spent 
 a few days there when travelling with Sir Charles 
 Wilson. On the day after our arrival I went out 
 alone to seek for inscriptions. A knot of people 
 soon began to follow. When I stopped to copy 
 an inscription in the doorway of a mosque, the 
 knot grew into a large crowd, which pushed and 
 struggled and blocked the light, and began after 
 a time to look so threatening, that I felt it pru- 
 dent to get away. One of Sir C. Wilson's men 
 was told off to look after me in future, and I was 
 not again troubled, even when looking through the 
 vast cemeteries, which surround this and every 
 other Turkish town. 
 
 It is not easy to get a really good and useful 
 servant. The only thoroughly useful servant whom 
 I ever had is described on p. 47 f. ; and I believe 
 him to have had Kurd blood in him. Turks are 
 as a rule so stupid, handless, and incapable, as to 
 be of little or no use in the most important parts 
 of the work. The best of them whom I have 
 
282 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 known has his portrait drawn on p. 45. Albanians 
 are far more intelligent and useful than Turks ; 
 and, as a rule, the traveller has most chance of 
 doing well with an Albanian (Arnaouf). They 
 have some faults of flightiness, and they are prone 
 to take a lofty view of their own importance ; but, 
 so long as you keep a tight hand on them, this 
 latter quality may be turned very much to your 
 own advantage. In exaggerating his own im- 
 portance, the Albanian necessarily gives a corre- 
 spondingly exaggerated picture of his master's 
 consequence. When you have an Albanian with 
 you, the respect paid to you by the Turks during 
 your earlier journeys will always be greater than 
 when you have only Turks, or Turks and Greeks, 
 as servants ; and, if you know enough of the 
 native languages to be able to elicit the reason 
 (which most archaeologists cannot do), you will 
 find that a very interesting picture and history of 
 yourself has been disseminated. 
 
 In October, 1881, we were received in Sandykli 
 with extraordinary civility and respect. The 
 kaimmakam himself came to pay us a visit, before 
 we had sent to report ourselves to him an un- 
 exampled honour to an ordinary traveller, and 
 strictly contrary to etiquette and rule, of which 
 the officials usually are very tenacious. He found 
 us established in a khan ; and at once insisted 
 
TIPS TO ARCH^OLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 283 
 
 that such a place was entirely unsuitable for us to 
 live in. He placed at our disposal a good house, 
 which was temporarily vacant in the absence of 
 the owner and his family, persons evidently of 
 means and standing in the city ; and he conducted 
 us personally to the house, and showed the most 
 obsequious and respectful attention. I could not 
 understand the situation, until I found that our 
 Albanian Akhmet had published through the whole 
 bazaar, before we had been half an hour in Sandy- 
 kli, that the son of the Valide Sultana of Inghil- 
 terra had arrived with his harem and an English 
 aide-de-camp. It was too late to do anything to 
 correct the error ; but I warned Akhmet that he 
 must in future draw it milder. 
 
 For a long journey, lasting several months during 
 the summer, it is advantageous to have a tent, 
 especially for beginners. In the first place, it is 
 more imposing : a traveller with tent and horses 
 and servants is obviously a person of consequence. 
 Now it is extremely important for your purpose 
 that this impression should be spread around ; and 
 a servant who can trumpet abroad your importance 
 is always more useful. It is also more cleanly and 
 enjoyable, though when a sudden thunderstorm 
 comes on it is unpleasant to sit up in bed under 
 an umbrella, and try to keep a waterproof sheet 
 over the bedding ; and if a violent wind rises, it is 
 
284 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 almost as bad to rush out and pile large stones on 
 the ends of the canvas lest the tent be blown away. 
 
 Further, unless all the archaeologists be exceed- 
 ingly affable, you don't see much of the natives, if 
 you live in a tent. 
 
 Most of my journeys were done in this way ; 
 but other methods of travel more simple and eco- 
 nomical may be practised. In September and 
 October, 1881, when my friend, Professor Sterrett, 
 had to leave for Smyrna, I tried an experiment in 
 economy, travelling with a single servant and one 
 baggage horse. The following twenty-four days 
 were a miserable time. The baggage horse, a fine 
 animal with a light load, was frisky and constantly 
 straying. We were not skilled in balancing his 
 load, and it kept shifting. Our time was spent, 
 not in seeking monuments, but in minding that 
 horse and rebalancing his load. If we heard of 
 inscriptions an hour away to the right or left, we 
 could not go to them, being bound to our pack- 
 horse. On the second day he ran off, and we 
 pursued ; it was a comic spectacle to see his load 
 dance uneasily over his back for some time, and 
 at last slide round and settle in a tangled mass 
 between his legs. We nearly fell off our own 
 steeds laughing as that horse stopped, embarrassed 
 by the unusual position of his load, and looked 
 helplessly around ; but our laugh was changed to 
 
TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 285 
 
 wailing when we had to spend half an hour re- 
 packing and reloading. We should have been 
 better off, and done far more work, if we had had 
 no baggage except saddle-bags on our own horses. 
 You can turn on the natives to cook for you in an 
 evening, and they will do so with the greatest 
 pleasure as soon as they realise that you provide 
 the meat and they the cooking, for a meal all 
 round. 
 
 You must have your whole day, and one or more 
 servants, free for archaeologising ; and you cannot 
 combine that with minding baggage. With two 
 mounted servants you can do many things that are 
 not possible with one. For example, you see two 
 villages two or three miles from each other : you 
 go to one, and send a man to the other. The 
 latter has been trained to recognise what you want ; 
 and is able to report whether the village deserves a 
 visit. With three servants, as my wife and I had 
 in 1884 after Mr. A. H. Smith was invalided, one 
 can sweep a great valley from end to end in marvel- 
 lously short time. 
 
 A few words about the humble but absolutely 
 necessary department of the commissariat will not 
 be beneath the dignity of future archaeologists. You 
 can't work without food ; and food is perfectly easy 
 to procure, if you know how to arrange ; but, if you 
 do not go about it in the proper way and are unable 
 
286 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 to speak to the natives, you may come near starving, 
 as was the case in that brief and unfortunate jour- 
 ney, which the "Wandering Scholar" describes in 
 amusing and pathetic terms in the second chapter 
 of his entertaining book. 
 
 It is a wise rule always to have with you, attached 
 to your own saddle (either in saddle-bags, or a pocket 
 connected with the saddle) a small supply of pre- 
 served food : I have found a tin of sardines handy 
 to carry, and a useful change from the ordinary 
 inland food. If you are benighted, or fail to reach 
 camp, you have then always a stand-by, which re- 
 lieves you of a pressing anxiety. This rule should 
 never be neglected : you may carry the same tin 
 for a month without using it, but never omit it. 
 When one is working long hours, and trying to 
 traverse as much ground as possible, sunset has a 
 habit of coming down in a most awkward manner. 
 
 Scores of times I have had a long ride of one or 
 two hours in black darkness on a strange road, in 
 complete uncertainty as to the way. Sometimes 
 we came out at the wrong village, generally at the 
 right one; occasionally we had to lie out on the 
 open ground and wait till morning. Until I made 
 the sardine rule absolute, such rides in the dark 
 were a time of anxiety : with a tin of sardines you 
 are master of your fate. In November, 1881, among 
 the Phrygian mountains, my wife and I found our- 
 
TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 287 
 
 selves alone in a pitch-dark night, two hours from 
 our village, probably on the wrong road. It was 
 hard frost, the altitude was 3900 feet above sea, the 
 prospect was discouraging, but it seemed best to go 
 on, as behind lay forest and steep ground down which 
 we had with some difficulty made our way in the 
 gloaming. After a time we saw a distant light away 
 to the left. We made a bee-line for that light ; it 
 shone from a house in our village that stood high on a 
 hill with a door facing in our direction and standing 
 open ; and near the village we met our men, who 
 had missed us in the forest owing to their dilatori- 
 ness, and, after returning home alone, came out in 
 alarm to search for us. When I came to know the 
 valley better, I found we had ridden across a great 
 marsh, which was impassable through most of the 
 year, but was frozen hard in November ; and the 
 road, on which we had been, led to no village. 
 That was the worst of many narrow escapes from 
 a night in the open country : in summer this is no 
 great hardship, and with sardines, servants, and a 
 fire is a mere picnic. 
 
 Apart from accidents, you sometimes find near 
 sunset that the camp is in one direction and a 
 tempting inscription is reported in the other. 
 Armed with your tin of sardines you prefer the 
 latter : without it you must return to camp. 
 
 An excellent rule is to have your dinner for the 
 
288 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 evening purchased in the morning before camp 
 is moved, and transported in the baggage. The 
 natives are very loath to do this, partly from the 
 unvarying law in Turkey never to do what can be 
 postponed for a little, partly from the fixed belief 
 that meat must be cooked within an hour or two 
 after being killed. But this is a popular fallacy : 
 in the fine clear air of the upper plateau, a lamb 
 used to last four days' dinner for a small camp, and 
 was eatable on the fourth occasion (at least to 
 hungry men). Always, therefore, compel your men 
 to buy a fowl, or something else, in the morning : 
 in a town get lamb or kid. Sheep or goat of the 
 second year is uneatable to an archaeologist, though 
 Turks or Turkmens prefer the larger animal to the 
 smaller. Lamb of six weeks old tastes, not like 
 our lamb, but like delicate mutton. 
 
 Fish are rarely found, and when found are 
 usually bad : the natives usually have a prejudice 
 against fish, and my own experience has been un- 
 favourable. Fish of considerable size swarm in the 
 Porsuk-Su (Tembris), a tributary of the Sangarios, 
 but are flabby and taste like mud ; two hungry 
 archaeologists, after a mouthful or two of such a 
 fish, could eat no more. In the clear, sparkling, 
 mountain stream that flows through the Taurus by 
 Bozanti Khan (on the pass leading south to the 
 Cilician Gates), a small kind of fish is caught ; I 
 
TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 289 
 
 had a most violent attack of sickness in 1891 after 
 eating some of them, and so had all who partook. 
 These are perhaps the same fish of which the Arab 
 historian Magoudi tells a strange story (Les Prairies 
 d'Or, vii., p. 97). 
 
 Returning from an expedition into the Byzan- 
 tine territory, the Khalif Mamoun encamped by the 
 side of the beautiful stream, whose waters were so 
 clear that the legend on a silver coin, which 
 was thrown in, could be read as it lay at the 
 bottom, and so cold that it was impossible to 
 bathe in them. Mamoun saw a fine fish in 
 the water, and promised a reward to the man 
 who should bring it to him. A servant caught 
 it ; but, as he was handing it to the Khalif, the fish 
 slipped out of his hand back into the stream, and 
 splashed the ice-cold water over the royal robes. 
 The fish was again caught ; but hardly had the 
 order been given that it should be fried, when the 
 Khalif was seized with a chill, and began to tremble 
 like a leaf. His attendants covered him with gar- 
 ments and lit a fire ; but he continued to complain 
 of the cold, and when the fish was brought cooked 
 to him, he could not eat it. He asked the name of 
 the stream : it was called Koshaira, " stretch out 
 thy feet ". He asked the name of the district : it 
 was called Rakha. Then he remembered the 
 prophecy that he was to die at a place called 
 
 19 
 
290 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 Rakha, on which account he had always avoided 
 the city of that name. That night he died ; and 
 Moutassem, his brother, reigned in his stead, and 
 carried his body to Tarsus, and buried it there. 
 
 In the upper waters of the Hermus alone, where 
 it is a clear mountain stream, have fish been caught 
 which have produced no ill consequences in my 
 experience ; but even they are not specially good 
 eating. 
 
 A camp-bed is a comfort, and conducive to health ; 
 but it adds considerably to the baggage. Some 
 years I carried one with me ; in other years I have 
 left it in Smyrna. By doing without it, and sleep- 
 ing on the ground for months, I learned to under- 
 stand a passage in Catullus's famous Ode 31. Some 
 of the commentators have vexed themselves to 
 explain by bad illustrative passages why, as soon 
 as he caught sight of his home, Catullus thought of 
 "the bed desired so long". Let them make a 
 coasting voyage in a tiny yacht like Catullus's 
 through the ALgean sea, and lie as hard as he must 
 have lain on the planks, and they will appreciate 
 his point of view. Further, they will cease to have 
 the doubts which some of them feel, whether the 
 voyage described in 4, and looked back upon in 31, 
 was real or imaginary. You have all the stages of 
 the true traveller's experience: in 46 the itch to 
 wander (as Sir Th. Martin renders it) : 
 
TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 291 
 
 Already through each nerve a flutter runs 
 
 Of eager hope, that longs to be away ; 
 Already 'neath the light of other suns 
 
 My feet, new-wing'd for travel, yearn to stray ; 
 
 in 31 the longing that has grown as time passes 
 for a comfortable bed ; in 4 the pleasure in recalling 
 past adventures and in associating them with the 
 inanimate friend that bore him through them. 
 
 After sleeping for months on the ground, I 
 came once to the city of Ushak, where I had an 
 introduction to a wealthy Turkish family of five 
 brothers, carpet manufacturers. After supper, when 
 I expressed a wish to sleep, the youngest of the 
 brothers brought in two large mattresses, soft and 
 springy, each a foot thick, laid one above the other, 
 spread silk sheets over them and a coverlet on top : 
 then all bade good-night. I took off my thick jacket 
 and sat down on the side of the mattresses to enjoy 
 for a moment the pleasure of sitting soft and warm 
 (the season was late, chill October) ; but my head 
 sank on the bed, and I knew nothing till the 
 morning sun wakened me. To my extreme disgust 
 I had missed the comfort provided for me, falling 
 asleep in my clothes with my feet in heavy wet 
 boots resting on the floor. But I shall never forget 
 the exquisite sensation of sinking on that soft 
 couch ; and yet, in ordinary circumstances, a soft 
 mattress, or the old-fashioned feather-bed, is an 
 
2Q2 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 abomination to me and the sure cause of a sleepless 
 night. 
 
 It is absolutely necessary to carry warm clothing 
 with one at all periods of the year. In June there is 
 often a cold and rainy week or two, especially in the 
 mountains : in the end of July I have experienced 
 two days of rain, wind and cold in the Anti- 
 Taurus region, which is very high ; in the first half 
 of July, even among the lower Phrygian mountains, 
 I have once known a similar storm (chapter iii.). 
 Moreover, the evenings are almost always chilly, 
 when you are above 3000 feet ; and, if you sit in 
 the open air, as we usually did, you must have a 
 warm greatcoat to put on. In the cities, where the 
 mud houses get saturated with heat during the 
 day, and radiate it during the evening, the interiors 
 are most stuffy and oppressive after sunset. On 
 the open plains, the soil, having been baked by the 
 sun for fifteen hours, is near red-hot in the late 
 afternoon ; and, if you put up a tent then, it keeps 
 in the heat and retains it for many hours ; but I 
 preferred to open the tent all round in the early 
 evening, so as to let the ground and the air inside 
 grow cool. After some years' experience, I began 
 the habit of carrying on my saddle, not merely a 
 waterproof cloak (which is quite indispensable at 
 all times on the plateau, owing to the sudden, 
 heavy thunderstorms), but also a thick greatcoat ; 
 
TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 293 
 
 and I have often had to put on both to keep myself 
 from starving of cold, though my travelling on the 
 plateau only once lasted later than 2Oth October, 
 and usually began not much before the last week 
 of May. 
 
 Most of the inscribed stones that have as yet 
 been discovered in the Turkish country are found 
 either in cemeteries, or in the walls of mosques, 
 or in the masonry of the fountains which are often 
 the least squalid erections in a Turkish village. 
 The travelling archaeologist can, and ought to, 
 make sure of omitting none of the inscribed stones 
 in these three classes ; and yet it is marvellous 
 how difficult it is to induce most travellers to 
 examine patiently every one of these places in 
 every village. I could tell many stories on this 
 subject, some of them heart-rending tales of lost 
 opportunities, some of them hair-breadth escapes 
 from such losses ; but the most striking incidents 
 of this kind might cause some regret, and I do 
 not wish to recall them. 
 
 In the houses or huts of the Turks, there is less 
 need for good stones than in the more elaborate 
 structure of mosques and fountains ; but even in 
 the poorest hut a fine old inscription may be 
 concealed, 1 and in the best houses inscribed 
 
 1 An example, p. 120. 
 
294 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 marbles are often found. For stones in private 
 houses or in barns, on tchiftliks, the archaeologist 
 must trust to chance, or the favour of heaven, or 
 his own wit and power of ingratiating himself with 
 the natives (as described in the first two chapters), 
 or a smart servant (if he is lucky enough to find 
 one). Time is needed to make discoveries in this 
 direction, and it is quite certain that in the greater 
 cities, like Kara-Hissar, Konia, Kutaya, and many 
 others, there remains a great deal to reward the 
 archaeologists of the future. But they must be pre- 
 pared to spend time ; and with the railways that 
 now spread so far over Asia Minor, they can 
 travel in a day into the heart of the country, and 
 settle there at a city in comparative ease of a rough 
 and ready kind. The explorer must not, however, 
 expect a European hotel. He must be prepared 
 to use his own wit to fill his own stomach ; or he 
 will often fare very badly. I have known of a 
 large party of archaeologists starving in a village 
 by the sea-coast, where they were stationed for 
 some time, barely keeping themselves alive on 
 bread and boiled weeds, with an occasional egg on 
 lucky days, until one after another they were all 
 struck down by fever resulting from lowness of 
 the system ; and yet there were numberless flocks 
 of sheep not far away, as well as fowls in the 
 village. But none of the party could talk Greek, 
 
TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 295 
 
 or put their needs and resolves before the people ; 
 and so they contented themselves with sending to 
 Smyrna for tins of beef from Paraguay, or salmon 
 from Canada, which always went astray in transit. 
 If you prefer to be idle, you can starve anywhere 
 in Asia Minor outside of Smyrna. 
 
 Inscribed stones are commonly turned upside 
 down. The reason probably is that the letters 
 frequently cover only half or less of the stone ; and 
 it seems more suitable to the illiterate eye to put 
 these irregular markings close to the ground, and 
 to have the smooth part in the more conspicuous 
 place. This is a fruitful cause of trouble, and error, 
 to the archaeologist. It is far harder to read 
 correctly, when you have to put your head where 
 your feet should be. 
 
 In the first years of my work in Asia Minor, I 
 always tried to make the best of the stone as it 
 was ; but in 1883 my companion, Professor Sterrett, 
 showed me the error of my ways. With true 
 American power of subduing nature, he pointed 
 out that the wise man instead of adapting his posi- 
 tion to the stone, would adapt the stone to himself. 
 Some stones are fixed immovably ; others seem to 
 be fixed ; but it is marvellous how many can be 
 turned straight at the mention of the potent word 
 bakshish. 
 
 One word more of advice. Never pay a man 
 
296 TIPS TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRAVELLERS 
 
 until the end of his service ; dangle always before 
 his eyes the prospect of pay and extra reward 
 (bakshish] at the end of his time, but give him 
 nothing beforehand. It may ruin the best Oriental 
 to get any reward during his term of work. 
 
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