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AROUND THE BLACK SEA
A complete map of the Black Sea and surrounding
country will be found affixed to the inside of
the back cover of this book.
AROUND THE BLACK SEA
Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia
Daghestan, the Crimea
Roumania
by
WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS
Author of “Turkestan: the Heart of Asia”
“Between the Andes and the Ocean”
“Today in Syria and Palestine”
“Modern India,” etc., etc.
[Illustration]
Hodder & Stoughton
New York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1911,
By George H. Doran Company
THIS VOLUME IS COMPOSED OF NEWSPAPER LETTERS
WRITTEN DURING THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1910
AND IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THE
MEMORY OF THE LATE
CORNELIUS McAULIFF,
MANAGING EDITOR OF THE CHICAGO RECORD-HERALD
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Cruising in the Black Sea 3
II The Ancient City of Trebizond 29
III Railway Concessions in Turkey 60
IV The Caucasus 85
V The City of Tiflis 105
VI Mount Ararat and the Oldest Town in the World 129
VII The Armenians and Their Persecutions 154
VIII The Massacres of 1909 168
IX The Results of American Missions 185
X The Caspian Oil Fields 214
XI Daghestan and its Ancient Peoples 228
XII The Circassians and the Cossacks 252
XIII The Crimea 265
XIV Sevastopol and Balaklava 292
XV Florence Nightingale and Her Work 313
XVI Odessa, the Capital of Southern Russia 325
XVII The Kingdom of Roumania 348
XVIII The New Régime in Turkey 379
XIX The Emancipation of Turkish Women 411
XX Robert College and Other American Schools 430
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Map of the Black Sea _Opposite title page_
A Turk of Trebizond 10
Coffee peddler on our steamer 10
Group of Lazis, Armenia, ready for a dance 53
The city of Batoum 56
A Georgian beauty 88
A Georgian prince and his sons 88
Head dress of a Georgian lady 94
The native costume of Georgia 94
Section of the road in Dariel Pass 95
A Georgian gentleman and wife 100
A Georgian peasant 100
Principal club at Tiflis 106
Floating flour mill, Tiflis 110
A Georgian cavalier 114
Palace of the viceroy, Tiflis 120
Patriarch of the Georgian Church, Tiflis 126
A Georgian prince 126
Mount Ararat 131
Nakhikheban, founded by Noah on the slope of Ararat,
the oldest town in the world 142
Entrance to the monastery of Etchmiadzin, Armenia 155
Kibitkas of the nomadic tribes 160
Persian quarter, Baku 213
A mosque of Baku 213
Temple of the fire worshippers near Baku 216
Domes of the Persian section of Baku 224
Prince Schamyl; “The Lion of Daghestan,” and his sons 228
City Hall, of Vladicaucasus 249
Type of the old-fashioned Circassian 252
A Circassian gentleman 257
Type of Circassian beauty 257
Gateway to Aloupka Palace, Crimea 266
Villa of the Czar at livadia, Crimea 284
Villa at Livadia in which Alexander III. died 290
Grafskaya Pristan, Monumental Landing, Sevastopol 294
Memorial Church, Sevastopol 294
The village of Balaklava 304
Chamber of Commerce, Odessa 328
Municipal Opera House, Odessa 332
View of the Bosphorus; ancient castle of Mohammed
the Great in foreground 392
Robert College, on the Bosphorus 432
AROUND THE BLACK SEA
CHAPTER I
CRUISING IN THE BLACK SEA
There are several lines of steamers on the Black Sea, sailing under
the Turkish, Greek, Russian, German, French, Austrian, and Italian
flags. The steamers of the North German Lloyd Company, which sail
from Genoa and Naples, through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus,
are best, but they visit only the ports on the northern coast. The
Austrian Lloyd steamers, which come from Trieste, are second best,
and we were fortunate in obtaining cabins on the _Euterpe_, which is
old-fashioned, but comfortable. The captain is an Italian of Trieste,
who speaks English well, as do two of the under officers; the steward
is thoughtful and attentive and the cook is beyond criticism.
The passengers were a perfect babel, representing all the races and
speaking all the tongues of the East, with several Europeans mixed in,
each wearing his own peculiar costume. There were Turks of all kinds
and all classes and all ages wearing fezzes of red felt; there were
Persians, wearing fezzes of black lamb’s-wool; Albanians with fezzes
of white felt, and Jews with turbans and long robes, such as they used
to wear in the days of the Scriptures. We had several Turkish army
officers to amuse us, and one big, blue-eyed general, who looked like
a philanthropist, but is said to be a fiend of a fighter. There were
English, German, and French tourists and rug buyers on their way to
Persia and Turkestan; a very fat Austrian woman who was going to visit
her son, consul at Batoum, and several Russians who had been visiting
Paris and the Riviera and were on their way back to their homes in the
Caucasus.
We had five different kinds of clergymen--Mohammedan mullahs, wearing
long robes and red fezzes with white turbans wound around them,
Greek and Armenian priests, who are difficult to distinguish, and
three Capuchin monks. One of them was a venerable old gentleman with
a patriarchal beard, and one was a mere boy who smoked cigarettes
incessantly--and a cigarette does not fit in well with the hood and
robe of a monk. The Capuchins have several monasteries in Asia Minor,
and maintain schools and do parish work in several of the cities along
the coast, where there are communities of Roman Catholics.
There were several Armenians in frock suits of broadcloth, low-cut
vests, and snowy shirt bosoms, like those affected by lawyers in
Mississippi and Arkansas, and one howling dervish. He did not look
a bit as you would expect, but was a jaunty fellow in a fancy shirt
of black cotton with white spots, without a collar, and an ordinary
sack suit of gray European clothes over which he wore his distinctive
coat of camel’s hair with wide sleeves and facings and trimmings of
broad black braid, and on his shaven head a fez of gray wool with a
wide band of black around it. He carried a dainty cane and whirled it
around in his fingers like a dandy when he promenaded the deck. He
was a presumptuous young dervish, for he endeavoured to enjoy the
privileges of first-class passengers on a third-class ticket, which
the deck steward would not permit. And when he did not go back to his
proper place, after being told to do so, he was rudely elbowed down the
stairs. It was not a respectful way to treat a saint in embryo, which
howling dervishes are supposed to be, but I suppose the deck steward
had his orders, and perhaps he was accustomed to dealing with such men.
Most of the Turks in the first-class cabin did not come to the table,
because they will not eat Christian food for fear that lard or some
other extract of the despised pig was used in its preparation. They
took their meals in their state-rooms, with their wives and children,
where they made their own coffee over spirit lamps and drank water from
red earthen jugs which they had filled at the sacred fountains before
leaving Constantinople. The women did not leave their cabins until they
reached their destination, when they climbed blindly down the gangways
into the row-boats, with veils drawn closely over their faces and their
bodies enveloped in large shawls.
Several Persians in the first cabin came to their meals regularly, and
brought their appetites with them. The Koran applies to them the same
as it does to the Turks, but those gentlemen were not so pious as they
should be. And I noticed that none of the Mohammedan passengers, except
the mullahs and one general, said their prayers when the time came. The
general was very devout. He wore a long, light-gray overcoat, reaching
to his heels, which he kept so closely buttoned that we wondered if he
had anything under it, and, like all military men over here, Russians,
Austrians, and Turks, he never put aside his sword, not even when he
spread his prayer rug on the deck and turned his face toward Mecca to
pray.
The other first-class Mohammedan passengers paid no attention whatever
to the hours for devotions, which gave me a disagreeable shock, because
I have always understood that a Moslem is so conscientious that he will
say his prayers five times a day at the proper moment, no matter what
he happens to be doing or where he happens to be.
Many of the third-class passengers, who are compelled to sleep on the
open deck, performed their duties regularly. They spread their prayer
rugs carefully down in the first open place they could find, and,
turning their eyes toward Mecca, went through with the genuflections
which are a part of the Mohammedan ritual, and cried in loud voices
that there is no God but Allah. Several of the private soldiers, and we
had a large number on board, said their prayers regularly, regardless
of their surroundings, but the majority of them did not and probably
not more than one out of five of the Moslem passengers paid any
attention to the hours of prayer.
Two of the mullahs in the first-class end of the ship had handsomely
bound books from which they read aloud, as is their custom. Turkish
students always study aloud. When you are riding along through country
villages in the East you can locate the school-houses by the murmur
of the voices of the pupils learning their lessons. If you go into a
mosque that is used for educational purposes you can always find groups
of students squatting on the floor, rocking their bodies back and forth
with a motion as regular as that of a rocking chair, and repeating the
lines of their lessons in loud voices.
I once asked a Mohammedan teacher in a Syrian mosque why this is done.
He explained that people understand that which they learn through
their ears better than that which they learn through their eyes. In
the second place, he said, when a person studies aloud the mind is
kept upon the subject intently and is not so apt to wander; thirdly, a
person who is studying aloud is not so apt to go to sleep as when he
reads to himself--and the danger of falling asleep is the reason for
the rocking motion of the body which all students practise when they
are at their books.
On the forward deck, where the anchor winch is, was camped a group
of Persians. Some of them were merchants of Constantinople and other
cities on their way to their native country to buy rugs and other
goods; others were faithful Mohammedans returning from pilgrimages
to Mecca. They were dignified, thoughtful persons with dreamy eyes
and intensely black beards, and two or three old men had made
themselves supremely ridiculous by the use of henna, which gives hair
a bright scarlet hue. It reminded me of What’s-His-Name in “Alice in
Wonderland,” who suggested that it would be awfully funny if everybody
would dye his whiskers green.
“And hide our heads behind our fans
So they cannot be seen.”
Others had their finger nails stained scarlet with the same stuff,
which gives a startling effect.
On the other side of the deck from the Armenians was a nest of
their hereditary enemies, Kurds--tall, robust, brown fellows, with
snub noses, small, fierce eyes and garments that are indescribable
because of the variety of cut and colour. They lay around smoking
cigarettes in the most indolent manner, each having what looked like an
old-fashioned quilted comfortable for a mattress and an embroidered bag
for a pillow.
The most interesting of all were the Lazis, from Lazistan, short,
broad-shouldered, muscular chaps, most of whom brought their wives and
children with them and camped amidship on the open deck like a lot of
gypsies. The women were entirely concealed in shawls of cotton or silk
that cover the head as well as the body, and they squatted in groups
in the same place all day long, scarcely moving a muscle except when
their husbands were hungry, and then they would dig down into a bag and
produce a loaf of bread, a dried fish, a few onions, and other simple
forms of food.
There were several babies scattered about promiscuously in
bright-coloured wrappings, and a number of children under ten years
old. Some of them had dainty features and lovely eyes, and a better
behaved lot of children you never saw. We did not hear one of them
cry during the entire voyage. They lay in their clumsy, queer-looking
cradles, made by rude carpenters, without the slightest attention, as
self-satisfied as if they had been millionaires smothered in luxury.
One night the peasants from Lazistan gave an interesting performance.
The music was furnished by an ordinary bagpipe with three stops, which
emitted a mournful and monotonous refrain, but with perfect time, and
the dancers kept step to it very much after the manner of the North
American Indian. They placed a child in the centre, a dozen or so of
them clasped hands in a circle, alternately spreading out as far as
their arms would reach and then coming together in a bunch, and in the
meantime stamping their feet, bowing the knees, and bending the upper
part of the body forward. Sometimes they would stoop to a squatting
posture and hop along on one side and then on the other; then they
would raise their arms as high as they could reach, revolving all the
time to the left. It was a graceful movement and rather fascinating,
and they seemed to enjoy it.
The third-class passengers who occupy the open deck, make themselves
as comfortable as possible with big bundles of rugs and blankets and
pillows, which they spread out wherever the boatswain will let them.
They gave us a continuous performance abounding in life and a gorgeous
riot of colour, entirely unconscious of their odd ways, their artistic
poses, and the entertainment they were furnishing to the foreigners
who could look down upon them from the afterdeck. The captain told me
that there were doubtless thirty different races among the passengers
upon that ship--Turks, Tartars, Mongols, Arabs, Armenians, Albanians,
Circassians, Georgians, Greeks, Jews, Kurds, Lazis, Slavs, Syrians,
Turkomans, Bokharoits, Wallachs, and Persians of various clans, which
can be detected one from another by experts, because of the way they
wear their clothes. Everybody except the women wore brilliant colours,
and they were shut off from observation as much as possible by blankets
pinned to the canvas awning so as to make screens.
Turks are very democratic. Islam recognizes no caste; there is no
aristocracy or nobility or any divisions among the Turks except on an
official basis and the inferiors show great respect to those who are
above them. The ordinary Turkish peasant is good-natured, honest,
sober, patient, frugal, industrious, and capable of great endurance.
He is not fanatical, but is kindly disposed toward everybody. His
hospitality is unbounded and the exercise of charity is one of his
greatest pleasures. Two ragged fellows came up to the first-class deck
one day, bringing a wash basin of graniteware painted a bright blue,
which they passed around, asking contributions for the benefit of a
sick man with five children who was lying helpless on the open deck and
ought to be given shelter below in the second-class cabin, which he had
no money to pay for. I noticed that everybody chipped in something,
from the glittering general to the tatterdemalions who lay sprawled
upon their blankets in the shady places.
Every third-class passenger had a basket of provisions and a jug of
water, and an old man fixed himself a place in the corner, where he set
up a samovar and made coffee to sell. He did a good business, too. His
little brass pot was always in motion, because Turks are inveterate
coffee drinkers and want a cup of that beverage every few minutes. The
old coffee seller was a picture--a Turk from Samsoun, a good-natured
old fellow with a wrinkled face, a curly beard, a white turban, and a
smile like that of our President, which won’t come off.
[Illustration: Coffee peddler on our steamer]
[Illustration: A Turk of Trebizard]
The beauties of the Bosphorus have often been described, and probably
no sheet of water of corresponding length is so highly decorated by
nature and by man. There are a dozen splendid palaces, some of the
most imposing residences in all the world, sitting on the very edge of
the water at the foot of the hills which enclose the Bosphorus. The
Dolma Bactche Palace, now occupied by the sultan, is perhaps the
finest, and near it is another equally famous, the Cherigan Palace,
which was occupied by the Turkish Parliament until it was burned in
February, 1910. The roofless walls, stained with smoke, and the hollow
windows now stand mute, unable to testify in their own defence and
solve the mystery whether the calamity was due to arson or accident.
It is generally assumed that the fire was started by incendiaries, for
it seemed to break out in several places at the same time, and burned
so fiercely as to suggest inflammables. However, there is no definite
knowledge on the subject. It occurred in the night, the watchmen were
asleep or absent, there were no police in the neighbourhood, and one
of the most exquisite gems of architecture in existence was a hideous
skeleton of marble before an attempt to save it could be organized.
The possible motive of an incendiary was to destroy a mass of documents
discovered in the Yildiz Kiosk after the forcible evacuation of Abdul
Hamid. His archives, official and personal, filled fifty carts and were
hauled away to some unknown place, where they were being sorted over
by a parliamentary commission, and already extraordinary discoveries
had been made concerning the treachery and hypocrisy of prominent
men. There has been and still is a determination on the part of
certain personages, whose reputations will be ruined, to prevent the
publication of these papers, and there have been several stormy debates
in the Chamber of Deputies on the subject. Lacking other explanations,
it has been assumed that the Cherigan Palace was set on fire for the
purpose of destroying these private papers of the ex-sultan, although
it was a useless sacrifice. The documents were not there. Few people
knew where they were, except the commission which was engaged in
classifying them.
Cherigan Palace stood on the shore of the Bosphorus about two miles
from the bridge which connects Galata and Stamboul, and it was the most
attractive and artistic of all the many buildings which give that water
course its fame. It was built about sixty years ago by Abdul Aziz, who
was sultan from 1861 to 1876, and was the best ruler Turkey has known
for centuries. He intended it for his own residence, lived there for
twelve years, and died there in a most tragic manner, June 17, 1876.
There his son, Murad V, was allowed to reign for a few months, until
he was deposed by a conspiracy which placed Abdul Hamid, the late
sultan, in power, and the latter kept his elder brother a prisoner
within its beautiful walls for several years, until he, too, was taken
off in a mysterious way--some believe by suicide and some by violence.
However, no prison was ever more artistic in design or expensive in
construction. It was entirely of marble, inside and out, and the
interior was remarkable for the richness of the carvings and of the
hangings and upholstery and for the beauty of the mural decorations.
When the Parliament was organized, Cherigan Palace seemed to be the
most convenient building for its sessions. The Senate sat in the state
dining-room, and the Chamber of Deputies in the ballroom, which were
easily fitted up for the purpose.
There are several hotels on the Bosphorus, which are occupied during
the summer, and all of the great nations, except the United States,
have handsome residences for their embassies in a water suburb known
as Therapia. The Russian embassy is the last and looks directly up
the narrow throat which leads from the Bosphorus into the Black Sea.
Both sides of this passage are guarded by heavy earthworks against a
Russian invasion. Turkey fears no other nation and Russia cannot reach
her southern coast by sea without going through Turkish waters. This
situation has exasperated every Russian since Peter the Great, who is
supposed to have left a will in which he admonished his successors
never to rest until they have added the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn
to the Russian Empire.
Robert College, an American institution which has turned out some of
the best men in the East, and an old Byzantine castle which dates
back many centuries, are the most conspicuous objects on the European
side, and near them is a sightly location where Dr. Mary Patrick has
erected new buildings for the American College for Girls, with funds
contributed by friends in the United States. Her former buildings in
Scutari were not half big enough, since the constitution was adopted,
to accommodate the young Turkish women who want an education.
The first town of importance, sailing eastward from Constantinople
along the southern coast of the Black Sea, is the ancient City of
Samsoun, founded by the Greeks more than two thousand five hundred
years ago, and always of consequence commercially. It has a splendid
location, sloping gradually upward from the sea, but like many people,
as well as towns, does not fulfil the expectations excited by its
appearance from a distance. There is a big hospital for soldiers upon
a slight eminence back of the town; several minarets show where the
mosques are; the five domes of a Greek church glisten in the sun;
several imposing business blocks and residences line up well along
the seashore and give a brave appearance to the place: but when you
land, you are disappointed to find the streets narrow and dirty, with a
mixture of smells arising from unknown sources, wretched pavements, and
mangy dogs lying around in the sun scratching themselves in a way that
is more suggestive than comfortable. Scratching is sometimes contagious.
But the narrow streets are interesting, and the market place,
with a circular fountain and an ancient mosque, offers one of the
quaintest and most picturesque Oriental scenes you could imagine. In
the foreground a butter dealer in an indescribable costume of more
colours than Joseph could possibly have had in his coat, was ladling
greasy-looking stuff from a great tub with a wooden spoon and, on
his scales, he used stones for weights. The vegetables and oranges
were fine. Onions and garlic could be felt in the air, both in the
raw material and in the finished form of odours. Turks are largely
vegetarians. Vegetables, fruits, and soups made of grain are the chief
articles of their diet. We were told that Samsoun is a great place
for apples, so much so that the bears come down in droves from the
mountains back of the town when the fruit is ripe and rob the orchards.
We tried some of the apples which the peasants sell by weight in the
market place, and found them dry and tasteless, but I don’t think they
were to blame. No apples are good in May.
There is a café every few yards on every street, where it seemed as if
the entire male population were sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes.
We saw a few nargiles--those long-tubed water pipes which are generally
associated with cross-legged Turks--in Constantinople, but did not
find one anywhere else. I suppose they are out of style, for all the
Turks that we met were smoking cigarettes instead.
Quantities of licorice root are shipped from Samsoun. It grows wild in
the mountains. The quality, as well as the value, might be improved
by cultivation, but such a thing has never been attempted on a large
scale. The sheep upon the mountain sides furnish cargoes of wool, and
the cattle we saw grazing in large herds add many hides, but tobacco
is the chief article of export from Samsoun, and a boy who voluntarily
attached himself to our party and followed us along, chattering as he
went, told us that a large establishment surrounded by a high wall
belonged to Americans.
How a Turkish lad, who presumably had never been out of his native
place, could have identified us as Americans is remarkable, for
in Oriental countries, even in China and Japan, the natives are
seldom able to distinguish between Uncle Sam and John Bull; but,
nevertheless, we acted on the welcome information and soon found three
fellow-countrymen representing the American Tobacco Company purely for
the purpose of buying cigarette material, and, in 1909, they shipped
$397,000 in tobacco from that port alone. There are several other
buyers for the American market, but they come and go with the season.
The tobacco produced around Samsoun is light of colour, and of fine
flavour, especially suited for cigarettes. There is a great difference
in the quality according to the care and cultivation, and the Americans
have persuaded a few of the farmers to improve their methods and
implements. They told me that twice the present crop might be produced
from the same area if half the care and skill were expended upon it
that the Cuban planters give to their tobacco. Samsoun expects to be
the northern terminus of one of the railways which have been authorized
by the Turkish Parliament.
If you will look on your map you will notice that Asia Minor is that
part of Turkey which projects into the Mediterranean on the Asiatic
side, an almost square peninsula about three hundred miles each way.
It is bounded on the north by the Black Sea, on the east by Armenia
and Kurdistan, on the south by Syria and the Mediterranean and on the
west by the Ægean Sea. The western portion of Asia Minor is called
Anatolia. It is densely settled by Turkish farmers who cultivate the
ground in a primitive, awkward way, but do not realize more than half
the value of their labour; first, because of their primitive tools and
instruments and their imperfect cultivation, and, second, because there
are no transportation facilities by which they can send their produce
to market. There are two railways running into the interior from the
Mediterranean coast, furnishing communication for about 10 per cent. of
the population. Throughout 90 per cent. of Asia Minor the only way of
travelling is on the back of a horse or a donkey and the only facility
for moving freight is by caravans of camels, which are slow and very
expensive. For these reasons the inhabitants depend to a great extent
upon their own resources. They make everything they wear except cotton
fabrics and have very little to ship away.
Almost directly south of Samsoun, about a hundred miles, is the
Marsovan station of the American Board, first occupied in 1852, and
for fifty-eight years the headquarters of missionary work, not only
for that important city, but for a wide reach of country, including
Samsoun, Amasia, and other important towns. The work has naturally been
built up by a process of growth. Little day schools, teaching reading,
writing, and spelling in the vernacular, have developed into two great
institutions: Anatolia College, with its extensive buildings devoted to
the collegiate training of young men, and the Girls’ High and Boarding
School, an institution quite by itself, giving nearly the same complete
course of study that is given to the young men.
These two schools have ample grounds and are both adding gradually to
their large plants. The college for young men will soon have $30,000
worth of new buildings, which amount will erect about eight times
as much as in the United States. The girls’ school has completely
outgrown its large plant, completed only a few years ago, and is adding
substantial new buildings.
The college for boys has in a peculiar way taken hold upon southern
Russia. Three or four years ago Russian students began to come across
the Black Sea, and have doubled in number every year since. It was
feared at first that they might be unruly and disorderly, or perhaps
revolutionary in their tendencies, but, quite contrary to expectations,
they have proved to be among the most steady, earnest, able students
the college has had. Like Robert College, at Constantinople, Anatolia
has Greek, Mohammedan, and Armenian students. Greeks are not found in
colleges east of Marsovan, to any extent.
The college has also, as a part of its organization, a large medical
department with extensive hospitals and a nurses’ training school
under the direction of two efficient American physicians, Dr. Jesse
K. Marden and Dr. Alden R. Hoover, assisted by a large native medical
staff.
Patients come to the hospital at Marsovan from a wide area of country
and it is reaching not only the Armenians but the Mohammedan classes.
The medical service has an unmeasured influence upon the people of the
country and makes an impression which no other form of missionary work
can possibly do. The people know when they are ill and want medicines,
but they are not often aware when they are ignorant and need educating
or are morally in need of spiritual uplift. When they meet with severe
accidents, as so frequently occurs in that country, or when they are
racked by disease, they quickly learn that relief can be found at
the mission hospital at Marsovan, and some means of reaching there
is devised. They often go on a rude cart, sometimes upon the back
of some animal, or, if they live upon a possible road, in a Turkish
araba or hooded “carry-all.” They find their way to the hospital and
there receive the kind treatment which belongs to every hospital, but
especially to the missionary hospital in a non-Christian land. After
treatment, they return to their homes full of enthusiasm and gratitude
for what they have seen and received.
In addition to the institutions already mentioned, which have separate
buildings, there is a theological school for training native college
graduates for direct evangelistic work among their countrymen. This
school will soon have a separate building, having hitherto been
considered a part of the college to which it was attached. The
importance of this work has now reached a stage where it demands a
separate home and possibly separate management.
Industrial work is an important adjunct to the college. It was started
as a means of self-help, to enable students who could not pay their
tuition or board to earn a part of it by manual labour, and American
machinery and tools were introduced for cabinet work according to
modern methods. This has proved so popular that it was necessary to
make a rule that no boy should take the mechanical courses alone,
without taking some of the regular courses in the college or the
preparatory school. Many fathers were so anxious to have their sons
learn to use tools and machinery and to make things, that they
brought them to the college and asked that they be admitted simply
for mechanical instruction. While the school has not been wholly
self-supporting, the students have been able to earn a large part of
the cost of their education and have received instruction that could
not have been given them in any other way.
This kind of training is especially important in Turkey, where the
idea has prevailed, and still prevails to no small extent, that when a
man is educated he must not do anything that looks like manual labour.
Unfortunately this delusion is not confined to Turkey. The mechanical
department is calculated to take that fallacy out of the minds of young
men, making them see that manual labour is no disgrace and that even
a scholar may do things with his hands. Turkey must come to the idea
that a scholar of the highest type may be a civil engineer, who will be
required to do outdoor work. The industrial school at Marsovan is but a
preparatory step to the larger comprehensions of the dignity of labour,
while at the same time, it trains the students who come within its
influence in mechanical exactness. There is much of value, missionaries
have learned, as well as educators in America, in training a boy to do
something that is worth while in a mechanical way.
As a part of the medical work, it has been necessary for the American
missionaries to establish dispensaries where cases can be treated
temporarily, and especially where medicines can be provided for outside
patients. It is so difficult to get pure drugs at regular Turkish
drug stores that it has been necessary for all the American hospitals
in the country to establish and maintain their own dispensaries.
Their supplies, bought at wholesale, are sent out from the mission
headquarters in Boston, and, therefore, are reliable in every way. Many
native pharmacists are being properly trained. These dispensaries often
prove almost as valuable for the lives and health of the people as the
hospitals, and are regarded as a necessary adjunct of every hospital.
At Marsovan, to carry on this work in all departments, there are
nineteen Americans: four ordained missionaries and their wives, three
laymen, two physicians, and six single women, all college graduates,
and nearly all having taken from three to five years of post-graduate
work. Connected with them, and working with them in every way, are
at least twenty-five times this number of trained native Christian
leaders, many of whom are graduates of the college or other American
institutions. Some have studied in Europe after taking a course in
the college at Marsovan. Upon the American staff, with the native
associates, also rests the responsibility of supervising native
evangelistic work in a wide field. Tours of inspection are taken by the
missionaries from time to time, thus keeping them familiar with what is
going on, so that they may devote their energies at the centre to the
demands of the work outside.
As an illustration of the way in which educational institutions grow,
Anatolia College is an admirable example. The germ which produced
this great institution, now with more than three hundred students and
several departments, was a little school in the corner of a stable in
the city of Marsovan in charge of Dr. C. C. Tracy. The stable filled
the greater part of the building, and in one of the corners, on a
platform of earth raised a foot or so above the common level of the
mud floor, and protected by a light rail, was the school. Less than
a dozen children there took their first lessons in learning to read.
At the start, in common intelligence, they were but little in advance
of the animals that occupied the rest of the room. No one could have
detected in that humble beginning the germ of an institution that now
covers several acres in buildings and campus just outside the large and
flourishing city of Marsovan, filled with bright young men from all
parts of Anatolia, from along the entire southern shore of the Black
Sea, and even from Russia, on the northern coast--studying for academic
degrees in preparation for positions of influence and leadership in the
new Turkish Empire.
This little stable school became a high school in 1886, and a
full-grown college a few years later. It now has a faculty of
twenty-three professors, fourteen of whom are natives of the country
and eight have taken post-graduate courses to prepare themselves for
their work. They have degrees from the New College at Edinburgh, the
University of Berlin, the University of Athens, the Imperial Law School
at Constantinople, the Royal Conservatory of Music at Stuttgart and the
Academy at Paris.
Anatolia College has sent out 224 graduates, of whom 207 are now
living. Fifty-two are engaged in teaching, forty-eight are practising
medicine, and eighty-six are in business. In addition to these
graduates, several thousand other young men have for a time studied in
the institution and for various reasons have been compelled to leave
without completing the course. These have, however, gone out armed
with a new power which this college has given them, and many are doing
signal service within and without the Turkish Empire. Not long since,
in a mixed gathering of Turks and Christians in Marsovan, profound
thanks were expressed by Mohammedan leaders for this institution and
what it has done to disseminate ideas of liberty, for the emancipation
of women, and for the general welfare.
Among the students in the college, who come from about half of the
twenty-nine provinces of the Ottoman Empire, are also found natives of
Greece, Albania, Egypt, and, as has already been stated, Russia. The
courses of study are similar to the usual college courses in the United
States, with the exception that more emphasis is put upon the living
languages than upon the dead.
Coasting along the south shore of the Black Sea, we were sailing
through a land of fable, and our steamer touched at some scene of
Greek mythology two or three times every day. At every port where we
stopped to discharge or take on cargo we were surrounded by fleets
of queer-looking boats with high-pointed prows and sterns, like the
gondolas of Venice and the ancient galleys of the Greeks. There is
always an exciting scramble when the gangway is lowered, and the
barefooted boatmen climb over each other to get on board to solicit
the patronage of the passengers. Their costumes, their cries, their
gesticulations, and the confusion they create make it hard to believe
that they are the descendants of gods and demi-gods, the heroes of the
poems and the fables and legends we read in Greek mythology. The coast
is bordered with a continuous range of magnificent mountains, rising
gradually from the sea, clothed with forests on the upper heights and
usually a strip of cultivated land along the coast. The successive
ranges, rising one above the other, culminate in snow-capped peaks in
the far background. The lower slopes and the coast line are dotted with
villages embowered in oak, chestnut, beech, walnut, and hazel trees and
masses of lilac, rhododendrons, azaleas, myrtles, orange groves, and
orchards of quince and cherry trees, which are all in blossom in April
and May and make a charming picture.
The steamer stops usually from one to five hours, which is long
enough to see everything that is interesting and gave us a good
idea of northern Turkey, which, by the way, is very different from
what I expected in many respects. Indeed it is necessary for every
one who goes there to revise his preconceived ideas of Turkish life
and character; but the way we had to fight with the boatmen and the
hackmen, who refused in almost every case to accept the fares agreed
upon before starting, shows that the successors of Castor and Pollux,
Theseus, Diana, and the other demi-gods have degenerated from the
classic days. It seemed almost incredible that we were actually
visiting the playgrounds of the gods. The imagination of the ancient
Greeks peopled that beautiful coast with supernatural beings, who were
the heroes of their fables and their songs, and there was a mixture of
history in them all.
The Argonauts, you will remember, sailed from Thessaly to Colchis under
command of Jason, to fetch a golden fleece, which was suspended from an
oak tree in a grove, guarded day and night by a ferocious dragon. Jason
built a ship of fifty oars, called the _Argo_, after the name of the
designer, who was instructed by the goddess Minerva.
Jason was accompanied upon this expedition by several of the greatest
heroes of Greek fable, including Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Theseus,
and others, who were called the Argonauts, after the name of the ship.
They met with surprising adventures, and when they arrived at their
destination the king of Colchis promised to give up the golden fleece
provided Jason would yoke together two fire-breathing oxen and sow
the teeth of the dragon which had not been used by Cadmus at Thebes.
Meantime Medea, the daughter of the king, fell in love with the captain
of the Argonauts, and, when he promised to marry her, showed him how
to put to sleep the dragon that guarded the golden fleece, and how to
protect himself against the flames that came from the nostrils of those
terrible steers. Jason did the stunt, to use a classic phrase, married
the girl, and sailed away with the treasure. After wandering about the
coast of the Black Sea and threading the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles,
the Argonauts at length arrived at Thessaly and told the story of their
adventures.
It is believed that the fable of the Argonauts was founded upon a
commercial expedition which wealthy merchants of Thessaly sent out to
explore the coast of the Black Sea, twelve or fifteen hundred years
before the Christian era, and the remains of the colonies they founded
may still be found along the shores of Asia Minor. This expedition
was followed by many Greeks from Miletus and other places who built a
fringe of cities and towns on every bay and island along the coast.
And their fleets carried on a commerce quite as important as that of
to-day. All historic interest in the Black Sea centres around those
colonies, which brought with them the culture that distinguished the
Greek from the barbarian of those days. Situated on carefully selected
sites, which the traveller can still identify, these colonies became
the profitable markets where the products of Asia and those of Europe
changed hands.
But the Argonauts were not the only characters of mythology that may
be met with up there. The city of Eregli, the first port at which the
steamer touches after leaving the Bosphorus and entering the Black
Sea, stands on the site of Heraclea, a famous town founded by Hercules
in prehistoric days; and in a garden north of the town is the cavern
called Acherusia, through which he is supposed to have descended to
the infernal regions to encounter Cerberus, according to the story.
Near this cave are the ruins of a Roman aqueduct and of two temples
which have been converted into churches, and on the mountain side are
coal mines that were worked by the ancient Greek colonists before the
dawn of history. Fuel was obtained from them, also, for the European
battleships during the Crimean war. These mines are said to contain an
excellent quality of steam and gas coal, but have never been developed
because the Turkish government, for some reason or another, has not
permitted it.
A poisonous honey made in the neighbourhood of Heraclea, according
to Pliny the historian, is supposed to have been derived from yellow
azaleas and purple rhododendrons, which abound on the hillsides in
that neighbourhood. Even now the farmers cannot keep bees, because the
honey they produce invariably makes people ill.
A little farther up the coast, the village of Bartan, known in ancient
times as Parthenius, according to Greek fables was the home of Artemis,
or the goddess Diana, as she is better known, who hunted deer and more
harmful creatures among the forests upon the mountain sides and bathed
in the waters of the river that comes bubbling down into the sea. Those
who do not believe this story can find proof in nearly every picture
gallery of Europe, for acres of canvas have been covered with paintings
of Diana, the divine huntress, and her achievements in forest and field.
The next village, Amastris, was the birthplace of the wife of Darius,
the great Persian king, and Dionysius, the Roman tyrant, and in a
gossippy letter to the emperor Trajan Pliny describes Amastris as “a
handsome city.” It continued to be a port of importance as late as the
ninth century. The Venetians and the Genoese occupied it in turn in the
Middle Ages several times. The site of the ancient city is now occupied
by an insignificant village, and the only reminder of the power and
prosperity associated with its past are the ruins of a citadel, an
aqueduct, and fortifications.
The port of Sinub is the ancient Sinope, the mother colony founded by
Autolycus, a companion of Hercules, and the most important of all the
Greek colonies on the Euxine or Black Sea. Here the cynic philosopher,
Diogenes, was born. It was also the birthplace of Mithridates the
Great, who ruled Asia Minor and all the country surrounding it several
hundred years before Christ. During the time of Pericles, Sinope was
the strongest and most important of all the colonies of Greece, having
the only safe harbour on the southern coast. It was the terminus of the
royal road which extended from the Persian Gulf through Mesopotamia,
following the valley of the Euphrates to the shores of the Black Sea.
Sinub is surrounded by high-wooded mountains which were occupied by the
fabled Amazons, and upon the island called Adasi, there was a temple to
Mars erected by and presided over by two Amazonian queens.
One of the stories connected with Sinub, which, however, I do not
vouch for, is that Mithridates, the Greek emperor, put his wives and
sisters to death with his own hands in the palace whose ruins we saw
one morning to prevent their falling into the hands of Lucullus and his
Roman invaders.
There is much to see in all these little towns in the way of ruins, but
the difficulty is that nobody can tell you anything about them. They
are not esteemed by the people and no archæologist has ever undertaken
to investigate them. They represent successive civilizations, first
Greek, then Roman, then Persian and Venetian, and, finally, the
Byzantine periods of occupation and culture, each of which was founded
upon the fragments of those which preceded it. No country has had so
much history, but it is impossible to fix dates or circumstances. Asia
Minor and that coast have been in the midst of the current of events
from the beginning of things. Every great conqueror has occupied
that country in turn, down to the final invasion of the Turks, whose
supremacy was established in the fifteenth century and has been
maintained ever since.
It was difficult to adjust ourselves to the realization that the little
towns where we went ashore as the steamer stopped are the same that
were occupied by Alexander the Great, by Cyrus, Darius and Timour the
Tartar, and it is asserted that there are traces of every one of them
there. But those communities have seen many changes since. That coast
has been a thoroughfare for conquerors, because of its geographical
position--a battle field for many, but the abiding place of none.