PART II

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[Illustration: Ghazi Osman Pacha]

TURKISH MEMORIES

by

SIDNEY WHITMAN

Author of

“German Memories” etc.

With Frontispiece

New York: Chas. Scribner’S Sons

London: William Heinemann

MCMXIV

Printed in England

------------------------------------------------------------------------

INSCRIBED

TO THE MEMORY OF

AHMED MIDHAT EFFENDI

LATE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE

IMPERIAL OTTOMAN BOARD

OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN

CONSTANTINOPLE

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PREFACE

Our aim should be neither to mock, to bewail, nor

to denounce men’s actions, but to understand them.

SPINOZA

THE following pages are the outcome of several prolonged visits to

Constantinople, Macedonia, and Asiatic Turkey, covering a period of

twelve years, from 1896 to 1908. Several of these were made under

exceptional circumstances and embody experiences such as do not often

fall to the lot of a traveller, some of which, I venture to think, are

of lasting public interest.

Anyone who has had personal relations with an autocrat—in this case the

spiritual head of a faith in which in the course of centuries thousands

of millions of human beings have lived and died—ought to have much to

tell worth recounting. There were also the surroundings of the Monarch

to be observed. Many a trait of deep human interest presented itself to

him who was a privileged visitor: for instance, the ups and downs of

fortune as they affected the all-powerful favourite whose good

offices—as in the time of a Madame de Pompadour—powerful Sovereigns did

not think it beneath their dignity to strive and compete for. Such a man

I have seen in disgrace, shunned by those who had hitherto prostrated

themselves before him. Finally, I have met him in the streets of London,

living under an assumed name in fear of assassination.

At one time it has been my lot to sleep on couches covered with the

costliest products of the Turkish loom; at another on the bare floor in

a dirty wayside han (camel shed), with camels and oxen as bedfellows,

typhus and small-pox hovering around us. Hospitality has been extended

to me in the underground mud-hut of the fierce, though hospitable,

Kurdish chieftain, armed to the teeth, and next morning I have beheld

the snow-capped summit of Mount Ararat, peering seventeen thousand feet

high through the clouds. I have seen the streets of Constantinople

bathed in the sunshine of summer, and a few hours later besmeared with

blood. The life of the people has presented itself to me in the workshop

of the artisan, with the boatman on the Bosphorus, with the soldier on

the march, and I have felt at home in such company. To all this may be

added many opportunities of entering into the spirit and thought of a

people usually so exclusive that Europeans may live for years in Turkey

without ever having an opportunity of gaining the confidence of a single

Mohammedan in any walk of life.

Our quick-living age is so full of transient impressions that “to-day”

has become the avowed enemy of “yesterday.” Men who but recently played

a prominent part in the world are forgotten; they are obliged to die in

order to reveal the fact that they were until just now still living. If

the material of my book is partly concerned with the things of

yesterday, the incidents and characters which it displays may at least

claim to illustrate a series of abiding human truths.

If it is only now, after a lapse of years, that I have decided to issue

these fragments of my memories, the delay is due to the fact that as

long as the ex-Sultan was on the throne my personal relations with him

and with those around him formed an obstacle which seemed to check my

pen. My narrative might perhaps have been discounted under the suspicion

that it was influenced by undue partiality or tainted by motives of

self-interest. Now that things have so completely changed there can be

but little danger of such an interpretation of my motives.

In describing certain traits of Turkish character I have intentionally

dwelt by preference on those which are brightest, because prejudice and

detraction have created an impression which calls for a correction of

values. My book, therefore, does not lay claim to judicial impartiality.

My aim has been to show by a recital of actual experiences that the

Mohammedan Turk, whose religion is that of sixty millions of British

subjects, is far better than his repute. I have written in frank

sympathy with his sterling human qualities, and with a keen sense of the

injustice he has long suffered from Christian opinion in Europe.

The Governor of Constantinople one day in 1896 said to me: “England was

for us once a garden full of roses, a subject of pleasant thought,

sight, and memory. Now, alas! a serpent has entered and brought discord

between us.”

* * * * *

In the course of my work a trifling incident led me into a

correspondence with the late Professor Arminius Vambéry, whose letters,

full of insight into Turkish affairs and goodwill towards England, will

be found reprinted in the Appendix. I am also indebted to my friend

Lieutenant-Colonel H. P. Picot, who was H.B.M.’s Military Attaché in

Teheran from 1893–1900, for a short contribution which will likewise be

found in the Appendix, p. 294.

From many mementoes in my possession I have chosen the autographed

portrait of Ghazi Osman Pasha for reproduction as being that of the hero

of a people whose fine qualities no one who is acquainted with them can

fail to admire.

S. W.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PART I

I. INTRODUCTORY 1

II. THE ARMENIAN OUTBREAK IN CONSTANTINOPLE, 10

1896

III. THE GRÆCO-TURKISH WAR, 1897 36

IV. JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY: I 57

V. JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY: II 82

VI. JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY: III 101

VII. JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY: IV 118

PART II

VIII. YILDIZ PALACE 137

IX. SULTAN ABDUL HAMID 159

X. A CITY OF DIPLOMATISTS 183

XI. THE LEVANTINE 199

XII. THE TURK AND HIS CREED 210

XIII. TURKISH TRAITS: I 233

XIV. TURKISH TRAITS: II 245

XV. CONCLUSION 261

APPENDIX 283

INDEX 299

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PART I

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Not oft I’ve seen such sight nor heard such song,

As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along.

BYRON, _Childe Harold_, Canto xi.

IN the spring of 1896, at a time when public attention centred on the

Armenian troubles, the Sultan of Turkey sent a confidential emissary to

London for the purpose of sounding the Marquis of Salisbury on the

situation without the knowledge of the Turkish Ambassador. He

endeavoured to obtain an interview with the Prime Minister, but without

success. The Turkish Ambassador was anything but pleased at this Palace

manœuvre, and did his best to prevent his master’s agent being received.

Costaki Pasha, with whom I was on friendly terms, told me that it was

bad enough to be kept waiting for one’s salary, but it was adding insult

to injury to have your position undermined by unauthorized missions.

The Sultan’s emissary informed me during his stay that the Sultan was

most anxious to ascertain Prince Bismarck’s opinion on the Armenian

question, and if possible to learn what the Prince would advise him to

do in reference to the embarrassing situation in Crete, and he begged me

to assist him in this matter.

Shortly afterwards I paid a visit to Prince Bismarck at Friedrichsruh

(June 26, 1896). After referring to the action of the Greek Committees

which were fomenting trouble throughout the Levant, the Prince expressed

his disapproval of the fire-eating Greek Press and the folly of its

European backers, who, as he asserted, were at the bottom of the whole

disturbance. It was on this occasion that the Prince, in answer to a

question, made the since oft-quoted sarcastic remark that “he took less

interest in the island of Crete than in a molehill in his own garden.”

Referring to the Sultan and his troubles, Bismarck put his hands up to

his ears, extending the open palms outwards, so as to imitate the

attitude of a hare and to convey the idea of the Sultan’s timidity in

face of a situation which called for exceptional nerve and strength of

purpose.

On my return to London in the beginning of July, I received a request

from the proprietor of the _New York Herald_ to come to Paris. On my

arrival he asked me whether I would be willing to go to Constantinople

to represent his paper there for a couple of months. Sixteen years

previously I had visited Turkey as a tourist, and I thought I should

like to see the country again. So I accepted the offer on the spot.

We owe to a popular writer the assertion that there is something

fundamentally different in character between the East and the West,

which makes mutual understanding difficult and assimilation impossible.

The English traveller who is inclined to accept this axiom may begin to

detect the Eastern flavour of things as soon as he leaves the frontier

of the German Empire behind him and passes through the Austro-Hungarian

Monarchy on his way to Constantinople. Monarchs and statesmen may come

and go, laws may be promulgated and the ballot-box may be adopted, but

the character of a people is not materially changed even by such

measures as compulsory education and universal military service. The

East has adopted some of the machinery of Western life, but the Eastern

remains an Eastern still. Institutions unsuited to a people’s traditions

and character may only jeopardize its fortunes:

A thousand years scarce serve to form a State,

An hour may lay it in the dust: and when

Can man its shattered splendour renovate,

Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

_Childe Harold_, Canto xi, stanza lxxxiv.

Should you arrive at Vienna on a Saturday, you will have to wait there

twenty-four hours if you intend to take the Orient Express to

Constantinople, for it leaves Vienna on Sunday evening, and even in that

short time you may feel a subtle change in the atmosphere of life. You

ask a sedate-looking official in the bureau of your hotel up to what

o’clock on Sunday morning the shops in the town remain open, as you want

to purchase a few travelling necessaries. “Till mid-day, sir,” is the

decisive reply. Instinctively warned by past experience, you turn to the

hallporter, who usually embodies the brain power of a Viennese hotel,

and in order to make sure you put the same question to him. “The shops

are not open at all, sir, on Sundays,” is his reply: and so indeed it

turns out to be.

You stroll towards the Leopoldstadt with the intention of taking lunch

at the old “Goldener Lamm,” now called the Hotel National, long renowned

as the hostelry patronized by European crowned heads as far back as the

Vienna Congress in 1815. You grip the brass handle of a glass door on

which the inviting word “Entrée” is affixed in large white enamelled

letters. You tug at it in vain and are ultimately warned off by a man

signalling frantically from the inside that it is not a door at all, but

only the window of an apartment—and that the real entrance to the Hôtel

is a few yards to the left. You now recollect that when you were there

last—some seven years previously—that blessed word “Entrée” was already

there, and that you—and doubtless many others ever since—were warned

off, the proprietor not having deemed it worth while to do away with the

misleading letters.

It is still Sunday, and you wish to post a registered letter. This can

only be done at the Central Post Office during certain hours of the

afternoon. You drive there, holding your letter in readiness, together

with a “krone” to pay the registration fee, and wait your turn

patiently. For without patience, that supposed Christian virtue (which,

by the way, I subsequently acquired myself and discovered to be of

Mohammedan origin), it is of little use starting on a journey to the

East. At last your turn comes and you patiently watch the registering

clerk, after slowly copying the address of your letter into a book,

retire to the back of his capacious office. You notice that he is

engaged in earnest consultation with a colleague. At last, he comes

forward with an air of embarrassment and explains apologetically that he

is in a “difficulty” as to providing the change out of the small coin

you have handed him. Finally, he asks whether you would mind accepting a

postage stamp of the value of ten heller (one penny) in part discharge

of the sum due to you.

All this happens within twenty-four hours! You know now that you are

well on your way to the East, where a minimum value of time and an

element of fiction mixed up with every action or statement of fact

constitute two of the many differences between the easy-going East and

the matter-of-fact West. But there are compensations in the altered

aspect of life, and one is the deep impression which Constantinople

produces on the stranger by its gorgeous variety of colouring, its

movement, and its polyglot chaos.

* * * * *

Constantinople with its five hundred gardens and palaces, its six

hundred and eighty mosques, minarets, and towers rising above the sea in

the form of a huge amphitheatre, offers to the eye a truly fascinating

panorama. Byron extolled its position as incomparable to anything he had

ever seen. That great traveller and student of nature, Alexander von

Humboldt, thought Salzburg, Naples, and Constantinople the three most

beautiful sites in the world. Such is its mysterious charm that “a Sea

of Impressions stirs the soul—as a balmy breeze plays gently upon a

cornfield in bloom. An intoxicating aroma is wafted towards us. All the

wonders of the Eastern World seem to float before our vision—fables and

palaces of the Arabian Nights.”

But if Constantinople must ever possess an attraction for the traveller

by virtue of its unique situation, a deeper interest lies in its

unrivalled historical associations, covering two thousand five hundred

years of the world’s history. From the days of Darius, Alcibiades, and

Justinian—when the corn-laden galleys from the Black Sea glided swiftly

past the shore opposite Seraglio Point—down to the present time,

Constantinople has always been the object of desire of ambitious rulers

of nations.

Seen on a summer morning from a window on the upper floor of the Pera

Palace Hotel, the city presents a dazzling picture of kaleidoscopic

beauty. We are several hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is

early morn, and a thick grey fog conceals the waters of the Golden Horn

as well as the land. Gradually, as if awakening from a dream, the sharp

angles of prominent buildings, the tips of tall minarets, the curved

outlines of stately mosques, emerge through the mist between clusters of

dark cypresses, dotted in stray patches away to the horizon. The rays of

the rising sun strike a few windows here and there. These glisten with a

peculiar iridescence, as if lighted by electricity—peeping through the

impenetrable haze still dimming the ground. Something ghost-like

pervades the scene. Fancy conjures up the vain anger of Polyphemus, the

deriding jeers of Ulysses.

Rooks caw overhead as they circle through the air. Chanticleer crows on

a patch of green meadow-land. Dogs bark with unwonted anger as three

bears, led by their keepers, thread their way through the crowd—well

accustomed to such sights. Resounding above all, the trumpet call from

the Cavalry Barracks vibrates, mingling with the shouts of hawkers in

the street. Fog-horns and the siren’s moan from ships at anchor swell

the chorus, and between whiles the tinkling of bells of passing mules

and horses is distinctly heard. Droves of black sheep, followed by

Thracian shepherds in picturesque garb, and numbers of horses of

Anatolian breed, ridden by barefooted boys, pass by. Amid this

pandemonium, bricklayers are at work on the roof of a seven-storied

building, run up in such primitive fashion that you wonder the whole

structure does not collapse and bury them among its wreckage. Yet

cobblers and tailors are unconcernedly plying their craft in the

basement, completing a picture which, if witnessed on the stage or

described in a story-book, would strike us as a fanciful realization of

a mythical world.

But lo! the sun! Mosques, minarets, and cypresses float out of the grey

mist as it lifts slowly off land and water. Turkish ironclads become

substantial things as they lie at anchor in the Golden Horn alongside

the battered old wooden hulks of Navarino’s bloody memory. At first the

iron prows only are visible, tipped with light. But as the sun grows

more powerful and plays on the water, streaks of silver quiver

serpent-like—a veritable Greek fire—round the hulls, until finally the

ironclads themselves appear majestically before the vision like

antediluvian monsters.

An old disused Turkish cemetery is spread out in front of us with its

mournful grove of cypresses. Not so very long ago the whole space from

the Hôtel down to the water’s edge was one huge graveyard containing the

dead of centuries. Théophile Gautier tells us that the Turk loves to be

near his dead. To-day only a stray gravestone is left here and there to

mark the resting-place of some pious personage hallowed for his faith,

his virtues, and on no account to be desecrated by the removal of his

bones. Farther away is the suburb of Cassim Pasha, on its fringe the

Marine Ministry, and close by, on a hill, the Marine Hospital. Adjoining

this, still farther to the right, is the Ters Hanè, the Turkish

Government dry-dock on the banks of the Golden Horn. And if the eye

takes a wider sweep to the right, the asylum of the poor, Fakir Hanè,

comes into view—a noble structure beautifully situated, handsomely

endowed by Sultan Abdul Hamid, and, with true Turkish charity, devoted

to the poor of all creeds alike. Then there are the Cavalry Barracks,

the Greek High School, the so-called Phanar—another instance of Abdul

Hamid’s munificence. Finally, as we survey the scene from left to right,

the cupolas and minarets of five different mosques, each erected in

honour of some noted Sultan—Bajezid, Suleiman, Schah-Zadè, Mahmud,

Selim—come into the picture and crown the horizon.

This, in faint outline, is the panorama of life and colour which, once

witnessed, is stamped for all time on the memory. Yet the imagination

is, perhaps, even more deeply stirred by the same scene deprived of its

cacophonic noise and its bright colouring in the mysterious stillness of

a summer night.[1] Thousands of twinkling lights tell of the unchecked

life of the city. The starlit heavens speak a language of their own.

They whisper of the transitoriness, the vanity, the futility of what the

human heart clings to, and, as if to emphasize the sadness of it all,

the twang of a harp and a guitar breaks the silence. The dulcet accents

of a woman’s voice—a Mignon of this Eastern land—ring out to their

accompaniment. The musicians are gipsies—that mysterious race of nomads,

wanderers like ourselves towards a distant bourne.

Footnote 1:

On great occasions, such as the Sultan’s birthday, the contrast of day

and night is still further heightened by the illumination of the

warships in the Golden Horn and other craft in the Bosphorus.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER II

THE ARMENIAN OUTBREAK IN CONSTANTINOPLE (August 1896)

There is no sure foundation set in blood;

No certain life achieved by other’s death.

SHAKESPEARE, _King John_

MUCH that I shall have to say in the course of the next few chapters

might be unintelligible, or at least liable to be misunderstood, if I

were not to explain the circumstances under which I went to

Constantinople as Correspondent of the _New York Herald_. My visit was,

as indicated in the previous chapter, in direct connexion with the

so-called “Armenian Atrocities,” and my mission was due to the

shrewdness of one man, a great newspaper proprietor.

For some time past the diplomatic and consular representatives of the

Powers at Constantinople had sent alarming reports to their respective

Governments, and these, passing into the Press, and supplemented by

harrowing accounts from the foreign newspaper correspondents in

Constantinople, had fanned a flame of resentment directed against the

Turks as Mohammedans. This was more particularly the case in England and

the United States of America.[2] The proprietor of the _New York

Herald_, almost alone among newspaper magnates, had the discernment to

perceive that the Armenian question was in the main a political one—in

some respects similar to that of Bulgaria a generation previously—and

that whatever might be the shortcomings of the Turkish Government and

its local Administration, there was little or no reason for assuming

that the disturbances had their source in religious fanaticism directed

against the Christian as such; whilst evidence was accumulating that a

vast Armenian conspiracy, nurtured in Russia and encouraged by the

Nonconformist element in England, obscured the real issue, to which

there were two sides. Mr. Gordon Bennett saw the chance of a

journalistic “score” in giving the Turks an opportunity of making their

own version of things known to the world—a chance which had been denied

to them by the great English newspapers.

Footnote 2:

See English Blue Books for the years 1895–1896.

This was my first experience as a Special Correspondent abroad, and

before starting, Mr. Gordon Bennett had given me his ideas of the duties

of such as follows: “The Special Correspondent of a great newspaper

possesses for the time being something of the influence of an Ambassador

from one nation to another. Now, according to an axiom of Machiavelli,

an Ambassador should endeavour to make himself _persona grata_ with

those to whom he is accredited, if only thereby to gain the best

opportunities for obtaining every possible information and to be able to

report events in a broad impartial spirit. The correspondent should give

his sources wherever possible, and allow the reader to form his own

opinion on the facts submitted. The views of the paper itself should be

found in the editorial columns. The correspondent is to take no side,

and to express no opinions of his own. In many cases it would appear

that the matter sent to the papers by their correspondents in Turkey is

biased against the Turks. This implies an injustice against which even a

criminal on trial is protected.”

Having stated this much, I may add that it would be an error to suppose

that it was expected of me to palliate or gloss over the gravity of any

excesses which might have taken place, for such would only have

frustrated the object in view. As a matter of fact, no foreign

correspondent in Constantinople gave more unvarnished accounts than

those published by the _New York Herald_ of the terrible events which

subsequently took place in the Turkish capital.

One of the salient features of Constantinople is the prevalence of idle

gossip, and I had not been there many days before I became aware that my

presence and its supposed purpose formed a topic of interest to people

whose very existence was unknown to me. One day, entering the Club de

Constantinople, near the Pera Palace Hotel, I was addressed in English

by a fat, sallow-faced, beardless individual, who told me with the

blandest of smiles that he had heard I had come to Constantinople to

“write up the Turks,” and that I was to be paid neither more nor less

than one million francs to do so. He asked me quite ingenuously whether

this was indeed the case.

With such an auspicious opening it could not be a matter for surprise

that before long the _Herald_ correspondent became an object of

curiosity to the large colony of “gobe-mouches” who supplied current

gossip in the guise of personal news to Embassies and newspaper

correspondents.

A conviction had gained ground in diplomatic circles, intensified by the

Press in general, that the Turkish Government was, if not actually

unwilling, at all events unable to prevent the recurrence of massacres.

The agitation on the part of the Armenian Committees in the different

capitals of Europe had been carried on to such purpose that there was

hardly an American or English newspaper which had a good word left to

say of the Turks, let alone of the Turkish Government. A horde of

adventurers of various nationalities, déclassés of every sphere of life,

cashiered officers among the rest, who had left their native country for

its good, were eking out a precarious livelihood by providing newspaper

correspondents, if not also Embassies, with backstair information.

Others were in the pay of the Sultan or his chamberlains, at the same

time acting as spies, watching and reporting the doings of people of

note in the capital in the interests of the Palace.

Thus whenever a stray communication, signed with some pseudonym,

appeared in a newspaper, it was at once assumed that it emanated from a

tainted source. For such was the prejudiced state of Anglo-Saxon feeling

against the Turks at this particular period—much to the delight of

England’s rivals on the spot—that it was quite sufficient to be known as

a philo-Turk to be credited with some kind of rascality.

My letters of introduction opened all doors to me, so that, had there

been any news to get hold of, I was favourably placed to obtain it, more

particularly from official Turkish sources. I was, therefore, much

disappointed at the meagre information procurable, either at the Sublime

Porte or at the Palace itself, since I had openly stated that my one

desire was to be put in a position to get hold of important items of

news, if possible earlier than my competitors, and to give the Turkish

side, or version, of events as they took place. This was the only favour

asked, and I was extremely surprised at the helplessness of the Turks to

avail themselves of a powerful organ of publicity ready to give them

fair play. Instead of meeting me in a sensible spirit, one of the first

things the Turkish authorities did was to confiscate the _New York

Herald_. Mr. Whittaker, the _Times_ correspondent, whom I informed of

what had taken place, said: “They are hopelessly dense. Tell them that

if they want the truth told they must let a correspondent manage things

in his own way.” But this the authorities were either disinclined to do

or incapable of doing all the time I was in Constantinople. Thus almost

every bit of news I obtained came to me independently of Turkish

sources, and was the result of my own individual efforts. Powerlessness

on the part of the official Turks to avail themselves of an influential

journal anxious to show them to the world in their true colours

(surrounded by enemies and slanderers as they were on all sides, in the

face of a serious crisis) was confessed to me one day in pathetic terms

by Mehmet Izzet Bey, one of the Sultan’s translators, in the words: “Mon

cher, nous sommes un peuple taciturne; nous ne savons pas nous

défendre.”

I had been some weeks in Constantinople, and there was no sign of

anything unusual being about to happen; nothing which would have

justified me in continuing to idle away my time in that city. So I wrote

to Mr. Bennett asking him to allow me to return home. But, as it soon

became apparent, this was only the lull before the storm. On the

afternoon of August 26, a Mr. Whittall, an English resident, volunteered

to accompany me on a shopping expedition to the Bazaar in Stamboul. We

took the funicular tunnel railway from Pera down to Galata, but had no

sooner alighted at the latter station than we were witnesses of an

extraordinary scene.

Everybody was in a state of wildest excitement. We were hustled out of

the station, the iron gates of which were immediately shut, turning us,

as it were, into the street, where on all sides the iron shutters of the

shops were being hastily put up with a deafening din. Every door was

closed against us, and we just managed to find shelter on some steps

leading down into a cellar so as to survey the scene. All this happened

with incredible rapidity. Simultaneously, a shrieking and gesticulating

savage crowd, of the type seen unloading ships in the harbour, came

along from the left, surging on towards the Galata Bridge. They were

armed with what, as far as I could make out, were wooden laths, such as

might have been split off from cases, or legs wrenched off tables and

chairs, and were in hot pursuit of a couple of Armenians who, covered

with blood, were running immediately in front of them, evidently flying

for life. They passed so rapidly that it was difficult to distinguish

between the pursued and the pursuers. The rattle of musketry was

incessant; it played an accompaniment to the dramatic scene, and seemed

to be coming from the vicinity of the Ottoman Bank, into which, as we

only heard later in the day, a band of Armenian revolutionists had

forced an entry, overpowered the personnel in charge, barricaded the

doors, and begun throwing bombs and firing revolver shots out of the

windows on to the crowd in the street.

Led by curiosity and the natural desire of a correspondent to see what

was going on, we crept along, skirting the side of the houses in the

direction of the firing, until we reached the corner of a narrow street

leading up to the Ottoman Bank. From here we saw some Turkish soldiers

standing in front of the Bank building and firing in the direction of

the windows, from which came shots in return. Half-way between them and

where we stood we could distinguish a number of dead bodies on the

ground.

On our way up the hill, back to the hotel, we passed several more dead

lying either in the road or in the side streets. Nobody came near them,

as would have been the case in many European countries; no curiosity was

shown: they lay prone as if death had been the result of some sudden

cataclysm, or shock, which had subsided as suddenly as it came.

The pavement as well as the middle of the streets showed big patches of

blood, proving that the massacres, which apparently had started among

the harbour population of Galata and Stamboul, had spread to the heights

of Pera. I took a walk through the Grande Rue de Pera and the adjoining

thoroughfares, in which every shop was closed, but did not meet a soul.

Had it not been for the dogs, which struck me as being unusually

depressed, Constantinople might have been a deserted city, and this

state of things lasted for several days. Such was the tension of nerves

that when I returned to the hotel I found the messenger boy who had

shown me the way to the telegraph office near the British Embassy, and

whom I had subsequently lost sight of, in tears. He had spread the

report that I had been murdered. As a matter of fact no Europeans ran

any appreciable risk of harm during those days, except, perhaps, through

the accident of an Armenian bomb exploding in the street in their

immediate vicinity. At night a table was placed in the hall of the

hotel, on which were placed a number of revolvers, so that each guest

might take one up to his room, and have a weapon with which to defend

himself. But for the dull thud of the bekdji’s (night watch) wooden

staff striking the pavement an uncanny stillness prevailed, as of a dead

city. During that night and the subsequent ones the dead were taken in

carts past our hotel and hastily interred in the Armenian cemetery on

the way to Tschishly.

Early next morning I went out with the correspondent of the _Times_. We

visited the Ottoman Bank, from whence the Armenian conspirators had,

only a few hours before, been taken away. Everything was in the greatest

disorder. Pools of blood on the first floor and in the basement remained

as evidence of what had taken place during the previous twenty-four

hours. We were shown a heap of blood-stained coins. On the second floor

we saw a table still littered with the remnants of the last meal of the

Armenians. The staff of the Bank had escaped through the roof when the

Armenians made their attack.

We thence wended our way to the Galata Bridge, upon which dense crowds

had congregated, the Turkish guard being doubled at the head of the

bridge, the wooden planks of which were dotted with a spray of blood

spots. In the afternoon a friend took me to a house near the Galata

Tower. We climbed up to the roof, from which we obtained a bird’s-eye

view of the harbour, and saw a crowd rushing from all directions towards

the quay—apparently on the alert to renew the outbreak.

I went up to the Palace in the afternoon and found everybody in a state

of great excitement. There could be no doubt of the helplessness of the

authorities in the face of the action of the mob; but great stress was

laid on the provocation given by the Armenian conspirators, which nobody

could have foreseen and which the Armenian Patriarch Osmanian had

publicly repudiated and denounced. The Turkish officials were indignant

that it should be said the movement was inspired by hatred of the

Christians as such, and the Sultan’s second secretary proceeded to draw

up a list for my information of the large number of Armenians who

occupied some of the best paid Ministerial posts and were among the

Sultan’s own staff of Court officials. The list I was assured ran to

about twenty per cent. of the higher employees at Constantinople. The

Keeper of the Sultan’s Civil List—Ohannes Effendi—was an Armenian, as

was also the chief Censor of the Press.

Next morning I went by steamer to Buyukdere to see the Russian

Ambassador, M. de Nelidow, who, through his chief dragoman, M. Maximow,

had negotiated the escape of the Armenian bank-breakers. M. Maximow had

gone up to the Palace, and by his language, the like of which had never

been heard in the decorous precincts, frightened the Palace officials.

There was some talk at the time of the British Fleet being ordered up to

Constantinople, a rumour which I mentioned to the Russian Ambassador. It

did not appear to please him, for he exclaimed rather excitedly: “Oh,

par exemple! Nous ne rendrons jamais la clef de notre maison”—a remark

the significance of which has never been absent from my thoughts from

that day to this in connexion with Turkey and her future.

I then called on Abraham Pasha at his summer residence, also at

Buyukdere. I had made his acquaintance a few weeks previously at the

Sultan’s Palace, and had been his guest at the Cercle d’Orient. A great

landowner and sportsman, as I could see the trophies in the hall of his

palatial konak, he was reputed to be the wealthiest and most influential

Armenian notability in Turkey, and had always been on the very best

terms with Abdul Hamid. He had even had the honour of entertaining his

predecessor, Abdul Aziz, at his country seat. I found him in bed,

guarded by a body of armed retainers, in a state of great trepidation.

“What is this? What is it all coming to? It is really too bad!” he

ejaculated as I was ushered into his bedroom. As a matter of fact

Armenians had been killed at Buyukdere. So great was the terror among

the Armenians of position that one of the wealthiest, the banker

Azarian, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction from the London

house of Rothschild, closed his place of business and fled to the

Prinkipo Islands. It was a novel sensation to see millionaires, thus

exposed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, being pursued

like rats, and if caught knocked on the head as little better than

vermin.

The most extraordinary feature of this popular rising against the

Armenians, at least from an ethnological point of view, was the

discrimination exercised by the mob in seeking their victims. Thus, to a

stranger, it would be often difficult enough to distinguish between an

Armenian and a Greek, an Italian, or a Jew, at least by the cast of his

features; and among Armenians there are Protestants, Roman Catholics,

and Orthodox Greek Churchmen. Yet those who belonged to the Orthodox

Greek Church, and were thus supposed to be implicated in the

revolutionary propaganda fomented in Russia, were sought out and hounded

to death. Hardly any Roman Catholic Armenians were molested, for they

were reported to have refrained from revolutionary activity. How the

unlettered crowd of Kurds, Lazis, and other Turkish tribes constituting

the lower classes of Galata were able to exercise such discrimination

still remains a mystery to me.

In the midst of the massacres going on in broad daylight a Jewish

money-changer in one of the streets of Galata was assailed by a crowd

and was on the point of being felled to the ground. In his abject terror

the man called out: “For God’s sake, let me go! I am not an Armenian; I

am a Hebrew.” The mob, though in a frenzy of passionate excitement,

desisted for a moment, and the man’s assertion proving to be true, the

crowd released him. The terror-stricken wretch rushed away, leaving the

contents of his stall, a mass of gold and silver coins, strewn on the

pavement. Several Turks forming part of the murderous crowd pursued him,

crying out: “Come back and pick up your money; we don’t want to rob

you.”

It is only fair to state that the German colony stood practically alone

in not succumbing to the prevailing panic. Even on the 26th of August,

when, in the first hours of consternation, public offices of every other

nationality were closed, the German Post Office, which is situated close

to the Ottoman Bank—in the very centre of the disturbance—remained open

and sent off its post-bags as usual. Bearing the German flag aloft, the

officials took the sacks of letters over the Galata Bridge to the

railway station in Stamboul, where the massacres were at their height. I

mention this fact, even after this lapse of time, because the

cool-headedness of the Germans on this occasion was one of the

contributory causes which, from that time onwards, made them rise in the

favour of the Sultan and the officials at the Palace at the expense of

the influence of other nationalities, who, for the time being, had

apparently lost all sense of proportion. This incident derives its

significance not so much from the presence of mind which the Germans

displayed as from the fact that it showed that they alone, among the

foreign element, were conversant with the political nature of this

outbreak, and refused to believe and to be influenced by its supposed

religious origin. The Germans knew that as Christians or foreigners they

had nothing to fear, whereas the agitation carried on in England by

Canon McColl and the Duke of Westminster, backed by sundry fervent

Nonconformists, had had the effect of exhibiting the fanatical Turk as

thirsting for the blood of the Christian. Thus, when the crisis came,

those who had allowed their minds to be dominated by these personages

failed to show that calmness and self-possession which are otherwise

marked characteristics of the English race when suddenly assailed by

peril.

Only a few English families, such as the Whittalls, merchant princes who

have lived in Smyrna and Constantinople for generations, and whose name

is a household word among the Turks, did not lose their heads. They even

exercised their influence to afford shelter to the Armenians whose lives

were in danger.

Through a mere chance, brought about, moreover, by my ignorance of the

conditions of the Press censorship prevailing at the time at

Constantinople, I was enabled to secure a “score” for the _New York

Herald_. For twenty-four hours that paper was the only one in the

outside world which had the news of the Armenian attack on the Ottoman

Bank and the massacres in Constantinople which were its immediate

sequel. This came about as follows: Foreign newspaper correspondents in

Constantinople, aware by experience of the difficulties put in their way

by the censorship when forwarding news unfavourable to the authorities,

were in the habit of sending their contributions by post to

Philippopolis, the Bulgarian frontier town, where each of them kept a

running account at the post office. From thence their communications

were forwarded by telegraph to their destination; a procedure which, for

newspaper purposes, involved a loss of twenty-four hours. This I was

unaware of, and thus ingenuously sent my telegram direct from

Constantinople to Paris, where it arrived the same evening, its contents

appearing in Paris and New York the next morning, before the same item

of news had even reached Philippopolis. It was afterwards stated that

this priority was due to favouritism granted me as correspondent of the

_New York Herald_; but this was not the case. It was simply an oversight

on the part of the Press censor, probably due to the extraordinary

excitement prevailing generally in Constantinople at the time. In proof

of this, I may mention that the telegram I sent off the next day was

stopped; indeed, it did not reach its destination at all, and the one I

sent on the day after arrived in Paris containing the obviously

exaggerated statement that twenty thousand Armenians had been massacred.

Any favouritism I was credited with must in this last case have led to

the publication of a piece of news very damaging to the Turks. Most of

the other assertions made about that time respecting my activity as

representative of the _New York Herald_ had no better foundation in

fact. The story that the Press censor had been discharged for stopping

one of my telegrams was as baseless as the rest. As a matter of fact he

retained his post until his death, and when I was last in

Constantinople, in 1908, his son, also an Armenian, had been appointed

his successor.

One day, immediately following upon the attack on the Ottoman Bank, the

police discovered a large quantity of explosive bombs of different sizes

in the cellar of a house in Pera, which, it was said, had been brought

there with Russian connivance. Now, although the correspondents of the

different European papers were invited to inspect the find, which was

afterwards publicly exhibited at the Arsenal (Tophanè), such was the

general disinclination to admit any fact which could tell in favour of

the great provocation the Turks had received from the Armenian

revolutionists that hardly any publicity was given to this discovery of

bombs.

One morning during the Armenian disturbances a card was brought to me

bearing the name of his Excellency Ahmed Midhat Effendi, Vice-Président

du Bureau Impérial de Santé Publique (Sanitary Administration of the

Ottoman Empire).

A tall, broad-shouldered, black-bearded man, in the prime of life, of

imposing bearing and with flashing dark eyes, wearing the fez and

dressed in the conventional black coat of high Turkish officials, termed

Stambolin, without any decoration, gold braid, or other indication of

his status, was shown in. He told me that he had come on the part of his

Imperial Majesty the Sultan to place himself at my disposal, in case I

should require his services, either to give me introductions, or to

serve me as guide and interpreter, as he possessed a perfect command of

the French language. He said the Sultan had read several of my

communications to the _New York Herald_, and was pleased that there had

come to Constantinople a correspondent who was ready and able to make

allowances for the great provocation the Turkish authorities had

received from the Armenian revolutionaries, and to treat Turkish affairs

from an impartial standpoint.

As this gentleman will be mentioned several times in the course of these

pages—for to my subsequent relations with him I am indebted for much of

my insight into the Turkish character—a few words concerning him may not

be out of place. The story of his early life and of his subsequent

relations with Sultan Abdul Hamid is an interesting one, and calculated

to throw a sympathetic light on the character of the Sovereign. Born of

humble parents in the Island of Rhodes, his father was either a dealer

in cloth, or, like President Andrew Johnson, a tailor; and he himself

was apprenticed to the calling. Being, however, imbued with a taste for

literature, Ahmed Midhat went into journalism and subsequently politics.

Here he came into contact with the Young Turkish Movement of Midhat

Pasha, and became implicated in the movement which led to the

impeachment of that statesman in 1877. One day the Sultan sent for Ahmed

Midhat, as he afterwards told me, and quite charmed him by his gracious

manner, turning him from an opponent to a champion, convinced that his

master’s one aim was the good of his country, so that he finally burst

forth with the declaration that the Sultan could reckon on him as one of

his devoted slaves. “I do not want you as a slave; I ask you to be my

friend,” the Sultan replied, finally captivating the generous-minded,

confiding man. Ahmed Midhat thus became an ardent and sincerely

convinced adherent of the Hamidian régime, and from all accounts he was

one of the few who never turned their influence to unworthy ends. His

position as part proprietor of the _Terdjumani Hakkikat_, a Turkish

newspaper, secured him independence. In his spare time he turned to

literature, and eventually became known and honoured throughout the

Turkish Empire as a regenerator of the Turkish language. He had been to

Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Victor Hugo and other literary

notabilities, and several of his novels—of an almost childlike

simplicity of thought—were translated into French and German. When I

made his acquaintance he was the virtual head of the administration of

public health, and one of the very few Turks who were given a private

seal, which assured that whatever communication he might wish to make to

the Sultan would immediately reach His Majesty. In spite of all these

advantages Midhat was hardly ever to be met at the Palace. His private

life was in harmony with his public conduct. He lived with his family in

his own konak at Beikos, on the Bosphorus, not far from the Black Sea,

under plain but patriarchal conditions, and there I was his guest on

several occasions. He had two wives and sixteen children, six of whom

were Christians he had taken into his family because they were poor and

destitute and had brought up as his own. I asked him how he came to take

such a course, and why he had not preferred to adopt Mohammedans. “They

were my neighbours,” he said. “They were poor and had nobody to look

after them, and I do not believe in proselytism. They are good and

grateful; that is sufficient.”

I paid repeated visits to different Turkish mosques on the Mohammedan

Sunday (our Friday). There had been statements in English newspapers

referring to the Sultan’s unpopularity, and I discussed these with Ahmed

Midhat. He said the suggestion that the Sultan had no following was not

true, but I might easily convince myself, as there was no surer

indication of the people’s feeling on this point than the popular

attendance at the mosques. During the last months of Abdul Aziz’s reign

the mosques had been quite deserted, for the people were disgusted with

a Sultan-fainéant—a drone who only lived for self-indulgence; whereas

the present Sultan was venerated as a Sultan—“travailleur qui

travaillait jour et nuit pour le bonheur de son peuple. In spite of the

disastrous war of 1877, and even of these latest disturbances, the

Sultan was beloved by his people.” In every case I found the mighty Aja

Sophia in Stamboul crowded with worshippers; all classes mixed up

promiscuously, the pasha kneeling next the Hamal, the common soldier

beside the field-officer. An atmosphere of earnest devotional fervour

pervaded the scene. Its sincerity was emphasized by children

unconcernedly playing about the recesses of the building, and sundry old

men—to all appearances beggars or cranks—moving along the aisle in and

out of the kneeling crowd, unmolested. Looking up to the mosaic inlaid

dome of the building, the outline of the figure of Christ was distinctly

visible through the covering of whitewash, paint, or gilt which had in

all probability been laid over it after the taking of Constantinople,

when the Christians made their last stand in this very building.

In order to prove to me how baseless were the fables regarding the

Mohammedan desecration of Christian churches, Ahmed Midhat drove me some

days later to the Kariè mosque, where the fresco figures of the saints

of the Byzantine church, though somewhat dilapidated, were still plainly

recognizable on the walls.

Shortly after the news had spread to Europe of the attack on the Ottoman

Bank and the subsequent massacre of Armenians, a number of artists of

illustrated newspapers arrived in Constantinople, commissioned to supply

the demand for atrocities of the Million-headed Tyrant. Among these was

the late Mr. Melton Prior, the renowned war correspondent. He was a man

of a strenuous and determined temperament, one not accustomed to be the

sport of circumstances, but to rise superior to them. Whether he was

called upon to take part in a forced march or to face a mad Mullah, he

invariably held his own and came off victorious. But in this particular

case, as he confided to me, he was in an awkward predicament. The public

at home had heard of nameless atrocities, and was anxious to receive

pictorial representations of these. The difficulty was how to supply

them with what they wanted, as the dead Armenians had been buried and no

women or children had suffered hurt, and no Armenian church had been

desecrated. As an old admirer of the Turks and as an honest man, he

declined to invent what he had not witnessed. But others were not

equally scrupulous. I subsequently saw an Italian illustrated paper

containing harrowing pictures of women and children being massacred in a

church.

The weeks following the outbreak of the Armenian conspiracy were of a

somewhat trying nature. It was long before things regained their normal

character. The clang of the closing of the iron shutters of the shops

reacted on the nervous system of the inhabitants of Pera for years. Even

after twelve years Turkish soldiers, who were ordered to patrol the

streets of Pera after the massacres, were still to be seen in the Grande

Rue de Pera at night doing the same drudgery.

In the course of my journalistic work I had occasion to visit the

Gumysch Soujou Hospital, situated near the German Embassy. About forty

Turkish soldiers were lying there, wounded by Armenian bombs or revolver

shots during the street fighting. I wrote an article dealing with this

subject and a description of the wounded, which must have been of a

sympathetic character, for it was subsequently translated and reproduced

in the Turkish newspapers. I was told that it had attracted the notice

of the Sultan and that he would like to see me before I left

Constantinople; but weeks passed by and I heard no more of the matter.

It was the second week in October, and I was about to return home.

I was on the point of leaving Constantinople when a messenger from the

Palace brought me word that Izzet Bey, the Sultan’s second secretary,

wanted to see me at once. On arriving at the Palace he came towards me,

smiling, with the words: “Sa Majesté vous offre un dîner and wishes to

see you before you leave Constantinople.” I returned to the hotel in

order to don evening dress for the occasion, and on coming back to the

Palace at about seven o’clock in the evening, I was ushered into a room

in the centre of which stood a table already set for dinner, which was

served and cooked in French style in contradistinction to the usual mode

of the Palace. Wines of various kinds, including champagne, were handed

round, presumably for my sole benefit, since the other guests only drank

water. This gave the entertainment a somewhat incomplete character.

After dinner Izzet Bey took me aside, and again expatiated on the great

services I was supposed to have rendered to his country. “Mon cher, un

milliard ne pourrait pas vous recompenser pour ce que vous avez fait

pour nous,” were his words. I was then, and am still, conscious only of

having acted in a fair and sympathetic spirit where others had

persistently given a one-sided account of events. I replied to that

effect, adding that as correspondent of the _Herald_ I could not think

of accepting any remuneration from anybody. Izzet Bey continued that the

Sultan wanted to know something about my position in life, as he took an

interest in me and would like me to come to Constantinople permanently

and enter his service in a suitable capacity. He then asked me to follow

him, as the Sultan would like to see me at once. It was about nine

o’clock in the evening when we wended our way towards the one-storied

villa-like white stucco structure where the Sultan habitually received

visitors. We passed through a glass door into a spacious hall, in which

stood groups of tall men clad in black frock-coats cut close up to the

neck in Turkish fashion, and wearing fezes. These were apparently the

Sultan’s body-servants. What struck me more particularly was that they

wore no uniform or any insignia of office or distinctive mark, or bore

any arms. Indeed, there was not a single armed or uniformed person

about; a plain civilian attire was evidently _de rigueur_ in the

immediate vicinity of the Sovereign. There was something distinctly

impressive in this simplicity. It suggested a striking contrast to the

glittering pomp and circumstance surrounding some other monarchs. I

still recall the deferential attitude of this little knot of Imperial

servants towards the humble mortal who for the moment was lifted upon a

pinnacle of earthly distinction by the desire of the Padishah to shake

hands with him. My position reminded me of the French Ambassador who

told the Russian Emperor Paul that an important personage in his empire

took a great interest in a certain matter, whereupon the autocrat

interrupted him sharply with the words: “There is nobody of importance

in my empire except the man with whom I am now conversing, and only as

long as I speak to him is he important.”

But an autocrat must not be kept waiting beyond the bare second which

is required to leave one’s goloshes outside the door. This done, we

passed through to the right into a brilliantly illuminated apartment,

the floor of which was covered with a costly Turkish carpet; the chime

of a beautiful grandfather clock heralded our arrival. The Sultan came

towards me as I entered the room, shook hands, and led the way to a

sofa, in front of which stood a small tabouret with coffee-cups and

some cigarettes. Two gilt chairs were placed opposite the sofa,

apparently for the occasion—to which he motioned us—whilst he himself

sat down on the sofa and handed me a cigarette. He faced us resting

both his hands on the hilt of his sword—for he was clad in the uniform

of a Turkish General—with the Star of the Order of Imtiaz in

brilliants suspended from his neck. I noticed then, as on subsequent

occasions, that the Sultan wore a single ring. It was a large emerald.

So much has been written in depreciation of this extraordinary man

that I cannot resist the temptation of reiterating the impression of

kindliness and sincerity which he made on me. In saying this I make

all allowance for our common human weakness in crediting those of

exalted station who are kind to us with every virtue, whilst viewing

askance others who neglect us. But the fact remains that Abdul Hamid,

without any physical advantage to speak of—rather the reverse, for the

features and figure might without much imagination have been supposed

to belong to a Galata money-changer—possessed an exceptional charm of

manner, a simple dignity and grace of bearing, which were calculated

to, and indeed did, gain the sympathies of those who were brought into

contact with him. There was something in his look and in the

even-toned balance of his sympathetic voice when addressing his

secretary which betrayed the habit of command, the exaction of

implicit, even slavish, obedience during a lifetime. It interested me

to note the attitude of extreme deference of those surrounding him.

Thus Izzet Bey only sat on the extreme edge of his chair with his

hands crossed flat on his chest and his head bent low while the Sultan

told him in Turkish what he desired should be communicated to me. The

Sultan wished to thank me for the sympathetic manner in which I had

written on Turkish subjects, and expressed his gratitude that for once

a journalist had come to Constantinople apparently free from those

prejudices against the Turks which were a source of so much trouble

and annoyance to him.

Rightly or wrongly, the Sultan seemed to think that he was under a

personal obligation to me which he did not deem sufficiently liquidated

by the bestowal of decorative distinctions. He suggested that I should

leave the _New York Herald_, come to Constantinople, and enter his

service. He wished me to remain attached to his person in some capacity

or other. I replied that I could not see my way to enter his service, as

it seemed to me that he had already too many people round him who drew

big salaries for doing little or nothing, and that at my time of life I

had no desire to come to Constantinople and live there. I added that

wherever I might happen to be I should always take pleasure in

endeavouring to secure fair play for Turkey and her ruler—a promise I

have since faithfully kept.

“Well then,” rejoined the Sultan, smiling good-humouredly, “if you will

not enter my service, come and see me again as a friend and be my guest

whenever you return to Constantinople; I shall always be glad to see

you.”

Knowing that I was about to leave Constantinople and that I was

personally acquainted with Prince Bismarck, His Majesty asked me to take

a case of china ornaments—a pair of vases and a painted plaque—from the

Imperial porcelain factory as a present from him to the Prince. The

Sultan desired me to assure the Prince of his friendly regard and to

tell him that he hoped he would always exercise his great influence in

favour of Turkey, a country to which Moltke, his illustrious countryman,

had in days gone by rendered valuable service. This commission I

subsequently carried out on my way home through Germany.

When I left the Sultan and walked out into the open air, into the balmy

calm of a starlit autumn evening, not a soul was to be seen. The

splashing of water from a fountain which issued from a wall on the left

was the only break of silence around, except the sound of our feet as

they pressed the loose gravel. Nor did I meet a guard or soldier or any

living soul as I passed the porter’s lodge out of the Palace. As far as

I could tell there would have been nothing to prevent a determined band

of half a dozen armed men from entering the Palace and kidnapping the

Sultan there and then, as others had entered the Ottoman Bank, the

porters of which, in their picturesque Albanian costume, were armed to

the teeth.

I left Constantinople the next day, the 12th of October.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER III

THE OUTBREAK OF THE GRÆCO-TURKISH WAR

Beauteous Greece,

Torn from her joys, in vain with languid arm

Half raised her lusty shield.

DYER

IN the winter of 1896–97 I had been acting as Special Correspondent for

the _New York Herald_ in Vienna, when, towards the end of February,

things began to wear a sinister aspect between Turkey and Greece. Thus I

left for Salonica on March 8, in order to await there the development of

events. On that day Greece finally declined to accede to the demand of

the Great Powers to recall Colonel Vassos from Crete. Thereupon Turkey

began to mobilize her forces, and to push them forward towards the

southern frontier of Thessaly. It was only subsequently, when Greece had

also concentrated nearly all her forces on her northern frontier, and

Greek volunteers, armed by the Ethnike Hetairia,[3] together with Greek

regular troops, repeatedly made incursions into Macedonia, that Turkey

declared war. Even then, however, there were hopes of peace left, for

Turkey was still inclined to listen to the urgent request of the Great

Powers not to assume the offensive.

Footnote 3:

A secret Greek political organization with Pan-Hellenistic aims to the

activity of which the disturbances in Crete and the outbreak of the

Græco-Turkish war were partly due.

At Salonica I had a dull time, living in a state of suspense, with

nothing to do but read the newspapers at the Club on the quay, or gaze

at the snow-capped crest of Mount Olympus across the bay. A few warships

appeared now and then in the offing. The largest ironclad of the Italian

navy, the _Duilio_, anchored in front of the city, and it was a treat to

visit it and to note the spick-and-span efficiency of the ship.

Rumours of the wildest kind from all manner of unreliable sources—mostly

of Greek origin—reached us daily. They tended to show that whatever

might be the forces at the disposal of the Turks, Ananias with his hosts

was on the side of the Greeks. His artillery was firing its missiles,

and these travelled with incredible velocity to the ends of the earth.

We learnt from more reliable sources, however, of raids over the

frontier undertaken by the Greek Ethnike Hetairia, with whom were the

Greek regulars, and who were reported to have committed various acts of

pillage and murder, even in the neighbourhood of Salonica, whose Greek

population made no secret of its sympathies with the Greek cause. It was

not safe to go about after dark, although one felt inclined to risk much

to partake of the decently cooked food and that collective social and

convivial life which the Germans—here, as elsewhere in Turkey—maintained

in the Kegel Club at the Hôtel Colombo.

The Jewish element of Salonica accounts for nearly half the total

population, and affords interest to the student of race and character.

These Hebrews are in strong contrast with their co-religionists

elsewhere, especially in Russia; not only as regards status, but also in

appearance. They are fine, strong, handsome men and women. Jews are met

with in almost every sphere of life—more particularly among the artisans

and the working classes; nearly all the Salonica boatmen are Jews. Some

of the Salonica Jews rise to high positions in different branches of the

Turkish Administration and invariably give satisfaction. They are “très

bien vus par les Turcs,” as a high Turkish official told me; for the

Turks, in spite of their supposed fanaticism, have always treated the

Jews with kindness, and this at a period when Christian Spain burned

them at the stake. I was told that the Jews of Salonica had only

recently celebrated the four-hundredth anniversary of their arrival in

Turkey from Spain, from which country they were banished in 1490. On

this occasion they had sent an address to the Sultan expressing their

grateful attachment to Turkey and her Sovereign. Prayers were offered up

in every synagogue of the Turkish Empire, and £T50,000 was collected for

benevolent purposes under the auspices of a Committee presided over by

the Grand Rabbi.

It was at Salonica that I first came into contact with that survival of

the fierce spirit of proselytism of former ages, the Anglo-Saxon

missionary element. Never do I remember to have met such implacable

hatred for the Mohammedans as that which seemed to animate the wife of

the Anglo-Saxon missionary, bent on converting them, together with the

Jews, to the religion of Love. She set me thinking whether she and her

husband might not have been more profitably engaged in the slums of the

great cities at home than among the industrious and sober population of

Salonica. An honest, hard-working Christian missionary who is

kind-hearted and humane in a Mohammedan sense may still do good work in

that part of the world, let alone in Asiatic Turkey, as I subsequently

convinced myself, particularly in the application of hygiene, since this

and medical science particularly are lamentably backward. But only harm

can come from the spirit of hatred which I now saw manifested for the

first time.

An English working-man of an ill-conditioned type was staying at my

hotel. I used to meet him in the café sipping his tea, with an unsightly

mongrel dog as his companion. He told me he had come from Lancashire,

and was engaged as foreman at some textile works situated on the quay.

He had also been in the United States. I asked him how he liked America.

He flared up and, pointing to his dog, replied: “You see that ere little

_dorg_! Well, I’d rather see ’im dead than in America,” bringing his

clenched fist down on the marble table with savage emphasis. This was

significant, but not the only testimony since vouchsafed to me of the

antagonism between the British trade-union spirit and the conditions of

labour in the United States.

There was an English public-house in Salonica, on the quay, facing the

harbour. It was kept by an English widow, but only opened its shutters

on the rare occasions when the English squadrons put into the bay, when

it did a brisk business.

One continuous stream of Turkish troops from Albania and Asia Minor

passed through Salonica, arriving by sea, and, for the most part,

disembarking in the dead of the night. I was often awakened by the dull,

plaintive chant of these wild children of Asia, or of the untamed sons

of the Albanian hills in their white skull-caps, whose voices mingled

with the sounds of the waves beating against the stone quay, along which

they marched on their way to the railway station.

I had been in Salonica about ten days when I received a telegram from

Mr. Bennett asking me to proceed to the Turkish headquarters at

Elassona, not as War Correspondent, for which vocation at my time of

life I scarcely felt fitted, but to report on the real state of affairs,

concerning which so many rumours were afloat.

I called on the Vali, who gave me the necessary permit and deputed a

Circassian officer named Mehmet to be my escort. I engaged a Roumanian,

one Hermann Chary, who had formerly been in the service of General

Gordon in Egypt, and, I believe, in India as well. He had since drifted

to Salonica, and was commissionaire at the Hôtel Impérial on the quay,

where I was staying. Even now I often call this man to mind when I read

in our newspapers of the extraordinary linguistic accomplishments of

some of our leading statesmen who speak French with a Parisian accent or

are wonderful German “scholars.” Here was a man who spoke some nine or

ten languages fluently, but had to be content to earn five francs a day

as interpreter in a third-rate hotel, and was delighted with the chance

I offered him of better employment. He accompanied me later in the same

capacity on my journey through Armenia.

We left Salonica on March 20—a Saturday—and our departure for Elassona

was marked by the following childlike flourish of trumpets in the

_Journal de Salonique_ (March 22):

“Mr. Sidney Whitman, Correspondent of the _New York Herald_,

left our city last Saturday for Elassona in order to follow the

operations of the troops. The local authorities of Sorovitch

have gracefully placed a military escort at the disposal of the

American journalist, which will accompany him to the frontier.

“Mr. Whitman is one of those rare correspondents of foreign

newspapers who have appreciated without malevolence the attitude

of the Imperial Ottoman Government in the various incidents

which have happened of recent years.

“We may be sure that again to-day he will keep the innumerable

readers of the _New York Herald_ correctly informed as regards

the imposing military forces of Turkey, the admirable discipline

of her troops, their valour, their bravery, and their

irreproachable conduct. The American paper has sent another

correspondent to the Greek Camp, and a third one to

Constantinople. It is always by telegraph that these gentlemen

communicate with their paper. One can thus form an idea of the

enormous expenditure which the _New York Herald_ incurs in order

to justify its reputation as the best and most promptly informed

journal.”

We proceeded by rail to Karaferia, which left us about eighty miles to

Elassona by road, and took the road to Sorovitch, where we spent the

night as guests of a pasha and reached our destination in the evening of

the next day. As we came nearer to Elassona we passed a large number of

troops on the road, for they were all converging towards that point, not

merely from Salonica, but also from the port of Katerina, where 1200

horses and mules were disembarked daily by army contractors. Many of the

men we saw were cavalry, clad in the most fantastic style. Some of them

rode mules, and, in addition to a belt full of cartridges round their

waist and shoulders, carried a pickaxe, a knife, charcoal for lighting a

fire, and a supply of flour, sugar, rice, barley, and beans. Their

foot-covering was the so-called “Tcharik,” consisting of a piece of

untanned leather tied with string to the ankle and leg. The villages we

passed through offered next to no accommodation; swallows built their

nests in the dilapidated tenements. In this truly desolate and wholly

uncultivated country it was difficult to imagine it had ever formed part

of the dominions of Philip and Alexander of Macedonia. But what its

economic possibilities might become under reasonable conditions was

brought home to us when our energetic interpreter provided a large glass

bottle of excellent red wine, holding a full gallon, which, bottle and

all, he had purchased in the village of Kossona for thirteen pence in

English money!

The _Herald_ at that time was regarded by the Turks as one of the few

foreign newspapers ready to give them fair play, and this ensured me a

kindly welcome from everybody—from the generalissimo of the Turkish

forces, Edhem Pasha, down to the humblest subaltern.

Elassona is a town of about four thousand inhabitants, situated on the

banks of the River Xerias, on the western slope of Mount Olympus, and is

supposed to be identical with the Oloosson mentioned by Homer.

Quarters were assigned to me, my interpreter, and the Circassian

officer, Mehmet, in the house of the mayor of the town, which had been

vacated. All the rooms were left empty but for a bare couch or two. Nor

did I see anybody in the house during my stay except now and then a

stray devout Mohammedan kneeling on a carpet in one of the rooms,

solitary and silent, engaged in prayer.

Edhem Pasha, who received me shortly after my arrival, was still in the

prime of life, and looked what he was, a fine representative of the

high-bred Turk. He was simple, courteous, benevolent, and endowed with

that innate dignity which Orientals seem capable of uniting even with

humble station. I must assume that a favourable report had preceded us,

for he welcomed me at our first meeting in his konak, attended by some

officers of his staff, almost as a friend, playing with his “tisbe”

between his fingers while he talked. Throughout my stay of eight days he

continued to show me every kindness in his power. He even consented to

be photographed at my request, with one of his officers on either side

of him. This was the photograph which afterwards made the round of the

illustrated newspapers of the world; for I never met with any other, the

high-class Turk rarely posing before the camera. But with all his

amiability there was a deal of punctilio about the Turkish

Commander-in-Chief. He could be inexorable at times. Later, when war was

declared and a host of correspondents appeared on the scene, some of

these gentlemen arrayed themselves in military uniform. Edhem Pasha

promptly informed them that, although they might possibly be entitled to

wear such costume in their own country, they were only accredited to him

as newspaper correspondents, and as such would not be allowed to appear

in uniform.

Fifty-five thousand Turkish soldiers were said to be quartered in and

around that primitive old town. Not a single woman was to be seen; not a

drop of wine or spirits could be procured for love or money. We were

told that twenty years before, during the Russo-Turkish war, twenty-four

thousand Turkish soldiers died here of typhus and dysentery.

Riding towards the camp, we met soldiers everywhere, some of them

leisurely sitting by the roadside cooking their meals. As we rode past

them an aide-de-camp of the Sultan turned to me and, pointing to the

Albanian Redifs, said: “These fellows know no greater delight than that

of being called upon to fight, and, if needs be, to die for the Sultan.”

One afternoon I rode out, accompanied by Mehmet Tscherkess, a young

Turkish major who had served in the Prussian Guards, and who was,

besides, an aide-de-camp of the Sultan and my interpreter to the Meluna

Pass, which formed the frontier towards Greece at that particular point.

When the war broke out three weeks later some fierce fighting took place

here. A small block-house on a summit marked the Turkish boundary-line,

and a couple of hundred yards away a similar structure denoted the Greek

border, where we could discern a group of Greek soldiers. The Sultan’s

aide-de-camp suggested that I should walk over and have a talk with the

Greeks; which I did, accompanied by my dragoman. We were met half way by

a Greek cavalry officer. He told us that he had been trained at the

French cavalry school of Saumur, and in manner and conversation he

certainly reminded us more of a Frenchman than a Greek. To a casual

remark of mine he replied light-heartedly—even truculently—that war was

inevitable, as also was the defeat of the Turks! Looking down into the

valley, the far-famed vale of Tempè lay before us, through which Pompey

rode a fugitive, flying from the fateful field of Pharsalia. We could

just perceive Larissa in the distance. The little white tents of the

Greek forces lay spread out at our feet and were plainly visible amid a

landscape more advanced in the verdure of spring and bearing far more

signs of cultivation and closer habitation than that we had passed

through in Macedonia. We parted on good terms. I rejoined the Turkish

officers, and rode leisurely back to Elassona.

On leaving Elassona the Turkish Commander-in-Chief had prepared a little

surprise for us. We started on horseback at about five o’clock in the

morning, as it was reckoned that it would take all day to do the forty

miles to Katerina, on the coast. After riding for about an hour, and

turning a sharp angle of the road, we beheld a squadron of Turkish

cavalry drawn up at the salute to bid the representatives of the _New

York Herald_ a parting good-bye. Even to-day I cannot think of this

little incident without the reflection how grateful the Turks were for

the smallest proof of fairness towards them, and how rarely they got it.

We rode on leisurely all day, and so scorching was the sun, although we

were only in March, that when I rose next morning in the little Greek

inn at Katerina I found the skin had peeled off my ears on to the

pillow. From Katerina a Turkish Government torpedo-boat brought us back

to Salonica.

War had not yet broken out, but every indication of its inevitability

was about us. The hotels were crowded with war correspondents, who had

arrived from all parts and were feverishly active, getting ready to

proceed to join the Turkish forces, buying horses, prancing about,

testing their purchases in the street in front of the hotel, engaging

servants, and laying in a stock of provisions. The English public-house

I have mentioned did a brisk trade. Among the necessities of the

situation was that of obtaining permission from the authorities to be

allowed to proceed to Headquarters. Nor was this an easy matter for the

representatives of those papers which for years past had relentlessly

vilified the Hamidian régime.

One day Mr. J. P. Blunt, the British Consul-General at Salonica, a

strong philo-Turk, said to me at the Club: “I want to introduce you to

the correspondent of the _Times_.” “I am sorry,” I replied jokingly,

“but I have made it a rule never to allow myself to be introduced to any

countryman of mine on the Continent.” Experience had taught me, as it

must have taught others, that—speaking of the type of Englishmen one is

likely to come across on the Continent—if they are in what, according to

their lights, is a superior position to your own, they do not desire to

make your acquaintance. If, on the other hand, they want something from

you, or their status is inferior to yours, it is for them to be

introduced to you. Mr. Blunt smiled good-humouredly and added that the

_Times_ correspondent, who had just arrived from London, had heard of my

good relations with the Turkish authorities, and would be very glad if I

could afford him some assistance, as he intended to proceed to Elassona

the very next morning.

This being the case, I declared my readiness to assist him to the best

of my ability. Mr. Blunt thereupon brought Mr. Bigham to my hotel. He

was a son of the present Lord Mersey, and impressed me as possessing an

equipment which would carry him far under modern conditions of getting

on in the world—a view which, I am glad to say, has since been borne

out. He wielded a ready journalistic pen, spoke and read Turkish, drank

tea and mineral waters, and was evidently as hard as nails. He also

wrote a book on his experiences as a war correspondent in the campaign,

and very kindly sent me a copy of it after the war was over. I gave him

a letter of introduction to Edhem Pasha, allowed my Roumanian

interpreter to accompany him, and finally prevailed upon the

Governor-General of Salonica to permit the Circassian officer, Mehmet,

who had been my companion, to serve as his escort on his journey. The

result was that Mr. Bigham arrived at the Turkish Headquarters well in

advance of all the other correspondents at that time in Salonica,

including that redoubtable but genial philo-Turk, the late Sir Ellis

Ashmead-Bartlett.

The Græco-Turkish war afforded what will probably be the last

opportunity, at least in Europe, for a fair heyday outing to those

belonging to what G. B. Shaw might well have described as, next to that

of royalty, “a decaying industry”—the profession of war correspondent.

Among other arrivals at Salonica were several German officers in the

Turkish service, notably the late Grumbkow Pasha, on their way from

Constantinople to the front. They appeared more eager for the fray than

the Turks themselves, like Sir Walter Scott’s

Great Chatham with his sabre drawn

Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;

Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em,

Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.

This eagerness for bloodshed on the part of men whose country was at

peace with the Greeks made a disagreeable impression upon my mind. I was

therefore not sorry when a few days later I heard that they had been

summoned back to Constantinople, the Russian Ambassador having protested

against foreigners in the Turkish service being allowed to fight in the

cause of the Infidel against the Orthodox Greek Hellenes.

On April 17—it was a Sunday—war was formally declared, and the Greek

flag was hauled down from the Greek Consulate. The streets were crowded

with people of every creed and nationality as they would be on a

holiday. The day is fixed on my memory by the absence of every vestige

of rowdyism, such as might well have been anticipated from the fact that

Salonica contained a large Greek population who had never made a secret

of their sympathies with their countrymen. I had repeatedly witnessed

the small Greek shopkeepers eagerly scanning the Greek newspapers for

the latest news, and this in the presence of their Turkish customers

without the latter taking the slightest notice. When the flag was taken

down from the Greek Consulate it was as if an immense load of

uncertainty was lifted from the minds of all. Now at least people knew

where they were, and both Greeks and Turks seemed to enjoy the end of

the long period of uncertainty.

I left Salonica for Constantinople on the steamer _Policevera_ on April

19 in the queerest company, for the vessel carried sixteen hundred sheep

and only one passenger—myself. At times my travelling companions tried

to prevent me from getting on deck, for they filled the whole of the

deck and pressed against the cabin door.

In Constantinople there was outwardly little evidence of the country

being at war. The only unusual feature was the crowd of Greeks that

blocked the entry to the French Embassy, which had undertaken their

protection whilst the war lasted. I remained nearly a month in the

Turkish capital, during which not a single instance of offence or

personal violence to the Greek population came to my knowledge, although

the modern Greeks are among the most demonstrative of races, and are not

accustomed to put a curb on their feelings in Turkey.

One evening a dense crowd gathered at the railway station and awaited

for hours the departure of the train which was to take Ghazi Osman Pasha

to the seat of war. His arrival from the Palace, where he was said to be

in close consultation with the Sultan, was expected every minute. At

last the carriage of the national hero of Turkey drew up. There was no

cheering or shouting of any kind such as would have been the case in

some countries—a solemn, almost a mournful silence prevailed. The

waiting-room and all the roads leading to the railway station were

crowded with Turks, but no “Hurrah!” or “Down with the Greeks!” was

heard. Many were engaged in earnest prayer, which they read aloud from

little books. Children were lifted up for the venerable warrior to kiss,

and old white-bearded men shed tears as Osman kissed their children. It

was a touching sight.

One day the Sultan sent me word that he would like me to visit the

hospital for the wounded—it was temporarily fitted up in the grounds of

the Palace. Marshal Shefket Pasha, the commander of Yildiz, together

with two Turkish surgeons, one a pasha, was deputed to accompany me. The

wounded were constantly arriving from the seat of war, and were lodged

in airy ground-floor sheds, and obviously had every care. I could see by

the elaborate surgical appliances and the scrupulous cleanliness

everywhere that the operation-rooms, painted white, excluded every

particle of dust. They were treated according to the latest scientific

principles, and down to the common soldier they had everything that

money and goodwill could provide. There was no complaining: Turkish and

European doctors vied with each other in caring for the wounded. Several

German surgeons had come expressly for the purpose, and had given their

services gratuitously. How highly the Sultan appreciated this

spontaneous action of strangers is, I think, shown by the fact that he

bestowed the Gold Imtiaz Medal, one of the highest Turkish distinctions,

which was only given by the Sultan for special services rendered him

personally, and which many much-decorated pashas did not possess, on

these foreign surgeons.

The Sultan next expressed a wish that I might inspect the “Bazar de

Secours” started by him to raise funds for the invalids and the families

of the victims of the war. It was a large one-storied building which had

been specially erected at his expense a short distance from the Palace,

and which was to be opened in a few days to the public. We are sometimes

able to estimate the taste, and even the very character, of the inmates

of a house by the articles it contains. So also on this occasion the

collection of heterogeneous objects exhibited for sale spoke a language

of its own. To begin with, almost every third article, and these the

most costly, was a gift from the Sultan himself; many others were from

members of his household and the fine old Turkish families generally.

This war, in which the Christian Greek had hounded the public opinion of

Europe against the Mohammedan Turk, deeply stirred the feelings of the

Turkish people; and when the news of repeated victories came to hand,

the Sultan may be said to have stood on the pinnacle of his popularity.

Also, the invitation to contribute to the bazaar met with a ready

response from the Turkish upper classes. The ladies of the harem, the

wife of the Khedive of Egypt, of the Sheikh ul Islam, and of nearly all

the pashas in the capital sent valuable presents. The donations included

beautiful old swords, daggers, and yatagans inlaid with precious stones;

gorgeous silver-gilt saddle harness, horse trappings, gold boxes and

caskets inlaid with precious stones; Gobelins, priceless old

embroideries and shawls, gold-framed looking-glasses, and trinkets came

from the ladies of the harem. Even a copy of the Koran, bound in leather

and ornamented with brilliants, in a gold box inlaid with pearls, was

among the collection of gifts. The Emperor of Austria sent a Louis XV

cabinet. The German Emperor, the Sultan’s friend, sent some samples of

the Berlin china works; but more interesting than these were about a

dozen prints of Professor Knackfuss’s well-known composition, inspired

by His Majesty and with an inscription in his own handwriting: “People

of Europe, protect your holiest possessions.” Each of these costly works

of art bore the autographed Imperial signature R.I., and were to be

offered for sale to the public for the benefit of the wounded. Alas! no

purchasers were tempted; for when I came again to Constantinople I was

told that the Sultan himself had bought and paid a fancy price for the

lot—for the benefit of the wounded.

Poor Abdul Hamid! Here in this bazaar were childlike faith and genuine

human nature to be seen in close propinquity with cheap, hollow

unreality: the latter soon to be exposed to the world in its true

colours.

Among the many notabilities who were brought to Constantinople by the

events of the war was General Nelson Miles, the Commander-in-Chief of

the United States Army, whose acquaintance I had the privilege of

making. I also met Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, on his return from the

seat of war, flushed with victory; for, as already mentioned, he was an

ardent pro-Turk. He was most indignant at the action of the Ambassadors

of the Great Powers, who, headed by Sir Philip Currie, had made a

protest to the Porte against the “atrocities” alleged to have been

committed by the Turkish soldiery in Thessaly. He related how the

English newspaper correspondents who were with the Turks as well as he

himself felt their sense of fair play outraged by these false charges,

and how they had drawn up a report and sent it by telegram from Thessaly

to the British Ambassador at Constantinople. He gave me a copy, of which

I append a translation; for even at this distance of time—in the winter

of Turkish sorrow and misfortune—it is of interest, as affording strong

testimony in favour of the much maligned Turkish soldier.

To His Excellency, The Ambassador of Great Britain,

Constantinople.

“We are able to give personal testimony to the admirable conduct

of the Ottoman soldier as well as the constant and most

successful efforts of the Turkish officers to prevent pillage

and to protect the Christian inhabitants in every way. The

Greeks, who are returning to their homesteads in very great

numbers, declared themselves very satisfied with their

treatment. The Greek inhabitants of the surrounding villages

have sent deputations to solicit the protection of the Turkish

troops.

“After the departure of the Greek military authorities from

Larissa the Greek Governor liberated the prisoners from the

penitentiary and provided them with rifles. These latter,

together with other lawless elements, did a deal of damage and

pillage at Larissa during the twenty-four hours which elapsed

before the arrival of the Turkish troops. The truth of this

statement is confirmed by the Greek inhabitants, as also by the

Greek priests.

“Only one Greek village, Deliler, has been partially burnt, and

this was due to the obstinate fight last Friday in the place

itself. Several houses have been demolished here and there from

whence shots had been fired on the Turkish soldiery. But the

discipline and conduct of the Turkish Army have been admirable,

and can be most favourably compared with that of the best troops

of the world. All the Europeans with the Army are of this

opinion.

“_Signed by_:

E. Ashmead-Bartlett, M.P.; Clive Bigham, Correspondent of the

_Times_; Geo. R. Montgomery, Correspondent of the _Standard_; W.

Peel, Special Correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_; H. A.

Gwynne, Special Correspondent of _Reuter_’s Agency; G. W.

Steevens, Correspondent of the _Daily Mail_; Hamilton Weldon,

Special Correspondent of the _Morning Post_.”

Before leaving Constantinople I received an invitation from Sir Philip

and Lady Currie to a garden party in the beautiful grounds of the

British Embassy overlooking the Golden Horn. On such occasions politics

were taboo. Everybody who was anybody was present, and a more charming

host and hostess it would be difficult to imagine than the British

Ambassador and Lady Currie; both since, alas! gone from hence. Among the

guests was an old Englishman, once, as I was told, the gardener of the

British Embassy in Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s time, and whose son is

now one of the most prosperous English traders of Constantinople.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER IV

JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY

The Pontic Sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont.

SHAKESPEARE, _Othello_

IN the beginning of September 1897 I was taking a “rest cure” at

Marienbad when I received a telegram from the proprietor of the _New

York Herald_ asking me to join him on his yacht _Namouma_ at Venice. On

my arrival he informed me that he had been to Constantinople and had an

interview with the Sultan. In the course of it he had suggested to His

Majesty that he should send an expedition into Armenia to verify the

facts connected with the disturbances of the last two years, and allow

the _New York Herald_ to be represented on the occasion.

The Sultan was favourably disposed to the idea, and proposed that I

should be the person selected to accompany the expedition. To this Mr.

Bennett had, as he told me, demurred; not that he had any reason to

doubt my reliability, but the fact remained that it was already known in

America that I had had personal relations with the Sultan. This in

itself would make it desirable that somebody else should report on this

particular subject. It was finally agreed with the Sultan that a member

of the New York staff of the paper, the late Dr. George H. Hepworth,

should be the correspondent, the Sultan making his final consent

dependent upon my accompanying the expedition as well.

Mr. Bennett continued that he had long desired to place his readers in a

position to judge things for themselves from information gathered on the

spot, and that this matter was one of exceptional interest to the

American public, owing to the fact that the Sultan had hitherto declined

to allow any newspaper correspondent whatsoever to traverse Armenia, let

alone to offer facilities for so doing.

“You will render the _Herald_ a great service in accompanying the

expedition,” he added, “for unless you go it will not start.”

It is not often that any man has an opportunity of visiting an unknown

country and at one and the same time of obliging an autocratic ruler and

a great newspaper proprietor. I therefore accepted Mr. Bennett’s

suggestion, it being distinctly understood that I was to hold what in

legal language is termed a “watching brief” on behalf of the Turks, and

that I should not be called upon to write at all unless a controversy

arose. In such a case, Mr. Bennett said that Dr. Hepworth and I could

fight it out in the columns of the _Herald_, which would act as

impartial bottle-holder. Fortunately the necessity did not arise to

submit to such an ordeal. The last words Mr. Bennett said to me on

leaving were: “In this matter you can look upon yourself as the Sultan’s

man.” And here I may add that, being firmly convinced injustice had been

done to the Turks, at least as regards the imputing to them of religious

persecution, I willingly undertook the task offered me of seeing “fair

play” given to them.

Some weeks elapsed before Dr. Hepworth came from New York and reached

Paris, from whence we started together for Constantinople. On our way we

broke our journey at Vienna. In travelling on to Belgrade we gave up our

sleeping berths to the King of Servia and his father, ex-King Milan, who

both travelled by our train, the Orient express. On our arrival at the

Servian capital early next morning we witnessed their official reception

at the station by the authorities, who looked very much like a gathering

of peasants at a country fair. King Alexander did not present a

sympathetic appearance; but there was a touch of human nature in the

expression of poor Milan which enlisted our sympathy.

We arrived in Constantinople about the middle of October, and

encountered at the outset the dilatory tactics which marked the

execution of every project emanating directly from his temporizing

Majesty. This seemed to depress Dr. Hepworth very much; but as I had

known cases of Turkish Ambassadors being kept dawdling about

Constantinople for months after they had been appointed to their post,

the delay did not surprise me. When, however, one week succeeded another

without any decisive step being taken, or any date being appointed for

our departure from Constantinople, we were driven to the conclusion that

there must be some special cause for the delay. This proved to be the

case. Information had reached the Sultan that Dr. Hepworth was really an

American clergyman with a strong bias in favour of the missionary

element, that he had contributed articles to the _Herald_ fiercely

condemning the Turkish Government for its treatment of the Armenians,

and that he had written editorial sermons for that paper regularly every

Sunday for many years past. Under these circumstances the Sultan

hesitated to place it within his power to enter Armenia. Such was the

information vouchsafed to me by a secretary of the Sultan, accompanied

by a request that I should come up to the Palace and have an interview

with His Majesty.

Munir Pasha, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, was present as interpreter

on the occasion, and in the course of the audience confirmed what I have

just stated. I could not deny that Dr. Hepworth, though a journalist by

profession, had in early years been a clergyman, and that he still wrote

short sermons in the form of editorials in the Sunday number of the _New

York Herald_. For all this, I assured the Sultan that, though Dr.

Hepworth’s sympathies were undoubtedly with the Armenians, this did not

necessarily imply unfairness of mind; whereas, if the information to be

obtained in Anatolia should turn out to be of a nature to exculpate the

Turkish authorities from complicity in what had taken place, Dr.

Hepworth, as an honest man, would report accordingly. The very fact of

his known sympathy with the Armenians would then double the weight of

his testimony. I succeeded in convincing the Sultan; he even agreed that

our route should take any direction Dr. Hepworth might decide upon.

Nothing was to be hidden or disguised from us, and in case of any

difficulty arising I was always to be at liberty to telegraph directly

to His Majesty without let or hindrance on the part of the officials

accompanying the expedition. The Sultan concluded: “You have already

given me substantial proof of your impartiality. Render me this service,

and I will grant you any favour you like to ask of me.”

To this I impulsively replied, somewhat quixotically as it strikes me

to-day, that he might rely on me doing my best in the interests of truth

and justice without any consideration of reward entering into the matter

on my part. As a matter of fact, I neither solicited nor subsequently

received the slightest remuneration from the Sultan or anybody else for

a task the arduous and perilous nature of which I was far from realizing

at the time, and the outcome of which was a journalistic triumph for the

_New York Herald_.

The impression I gained from this interview was that the Sultan was

sincere in his wish to get to know the true state of affairs. He

believed that the revolutionary activity of the Armenians, connived at

by Russia, had been the primary cause of the massacres in Asia Minor as

in Constantinople, and that the governors of the different provinces had

done their best to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Abdul

Hamid is not the only autocrat who has found it an impossible task to

get at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For it

goes without saying that His Majesty’s estimate of what had taken place

was based on partial and incomplete information. On the other hand, our

journey furnished us with abundant evidence that the Sultan’s views were

not without some justification, and that, as a rule, the governors of

the different provinces we traversed were men of tried capacity and

integrity. Viewed from this distance of time, there can be no doubt that

the policy of the Sultan in excluding foreign journalists from Armenia

was a mistaken one. It resulted in a one-sided version of the events

becoming generally accepted—the lie with twenty-four hours’ start,

according to Napoleon, is immortal—and it gave opportunities for

“writing up” atrocities without any of the extenuating features which

provoked them obtaining publicity.

It is not my purpose to render an exact account of our journey, for such

would fill a volume. This was done at the time by the late Dr.

Hepworth,[4] who did not very long survive the fatigues of the journey,

which at his time of life, he being then over sixty years of age, was a

most arduous undertaking. My aim will be to give some incidents of our

journey, the impressions which have remained in my mind as illustrative

of the aspect of the country we passed through as we saw it, and the

conversations we had with the people we came in contact with.

Footnote 4:

“Through Armenia on Horseback.” By the Rev. George H. Hepworth. London

and New York, 1898.

The ostensible object of the expedition was to report upon the schools

in the different provinces to be traversed, but behind this was

obviously the intention of obtaining information outside the usual

official channels with regard to the disturbances which had taken place

in the year 1895 in that mysterious country which Europeans are in the

habit of calling Armenia, although the number of Armenians distributed

over an area about as large as France and Germany combined, making every

allowance for the unreliability of statistics, can scarcely exceed a

million and a half, whereas in the Russian provinces bordering on

Asiatic Turkey there are probably even more, of whom, however, the world

never hears anything. The route of our journey, as drawn up with the

Sultan’s approval, would take us through Anatolia, Kurdistan,

Mesopotamia, and Syria. We were to proceed by sea to Trebizond, and

starting from thence to reach Erzeroum; from there to push on to Van,

thence to Bitlis, to Diarbekir, and to Biredschik on the Euphrates;

thence to Aintab in Syria, and on to Alexandretta, where we would take

ship back to Constantinople. By this route we would traverse four out of

the five so-called Armenian vilayets;[5] Erzeroum, Van, Bitlis, and

Diarbekir, leaving Mamuret ül Aziz out of our itinerary. This plan was

carried out with the exception that we omitted Van owing to the severity

of the weather and the uncertainty of being able to keep within the

projected time limit. Little did we realize what hardships we were to

experience, although we had been warned at Constantinople that such a

journey—never an easy one, and usually undertaken in the spring, summer,

or autumn—involved very serious risks in the depth of winter, when

snowstorms or floods might possibly keep us for weeks together in remote

places. The chance of being attacked by Kurdish tribes, of catching some

disease owing to the lack of all hygienic conditions in the country, the

primitive nature of the accommodation, sleeping on the bare floor side

by side with camels, buffaloes, oxen, horses, and dogs all in a state

far removed from cleanliness, lastly the unaccustomed food: these were

all matters for consideration.

Footnote 5:

The term vilayet is derived from the Arabic ejalet, and signifies a

governorship—an area—a district such as would be administered by a

pasha; thus a so-called “pasha tik,” or staathoudership. Hence the

term “Vali” stands for the administrator of a vilayet. The vilayet of

Erzeroum, for instance, has an area of nearly 50,000 square

kilometres, with 645,000 inhabitants.

On a black windy November morning we started in the Austrian Lloyd

steamer _Daphne_, and steamed through the Bosphorus, on our way to the

Black Sea, our destination being Trebizond. Our little party was quite

representative in its character. His Excellency Sirry Bey, one of the

secrétaires traducteurs of the Palace, was in charge of the expedition.

Halid Bey, his secretary, a fat, good-natured, harmless young Turk, was

always busy taking notes. Two colonels of cavalry, aides-de-camp of the

Sultan, were attached to the expedition, and six sergeants of cavalry

(Suwarie Tschaoush) formed a military escort in case of unforeseen

contingencies. One of these officers, Colonel Tewfik Bey, was an

easy-going, lymphatic cavalryman, whose big travelling portmanteau was a

horse’s entire load by itself, although all the other members of the

expedition restricted themselves to small hand-bags in consideration of

the difficulties of transport. The other officer, Colonel Rushti Bey,

was the most interesting personality of our party, as a specimen of the

aristocratic, carefully brought up Turk. A young fair-headed, handsome

man, he was indefatigable—the first up and on horseback in the morning

and never seeming to tire. He did not smoke or touch any wine or

spirits. His bearing was chivalrous, and though not given to

expansiveness, he was a man of the kindliest disposition. We had a

Doctor Wallisch, a Hungarian in the Turkish service, on board, who was

on his way to an appointment in Van. Fortunately for the party we

managed to persuade him to accompany us on the whole of our journey. Our

interpreter, Hermann Chary, an excitable little Roumanian Jew, who spoke

eight or ten languages, was the same man I had picked up in Salonica in

the spring of the year.

We encountered very rough weather in the Black Sea, which interfered

with our enjoyment of the fine scenery on the shore of Asia with its

forest-clad hills, some of them already covered with snow. This journey

in the company of staunch Moslems who would spread their little rugs on

the deck at sunrise and sunset, and pray silently with their faces

turned towards Mecca, was a new sensation to Dr. Hepworth and myself. An

awkward incident took place one day during the voyage. The cooking on

board as well as the bill of fare was “Frank” (_i.e._ European), and on

one occasion roast pork formed an item of the menu. So cunningly was it

prepared that none of us was able to detect it except Dr. Hepworth,

whose partiality for pork was so strong that his first request on

entering a restaurant in Paris, Vienna, or Constantinople was for a pork

chop, and when he had made it disappear, for another pork chop. In the

ecstasy of a delighted palate he proclaimed aloud that we were partaking

of his favourite dish, “roast pork”! Never shall I forget the dismay

that spread over the faces of the Turks present when this disclosure was

made. In order to save the situation I tried to make out that Dr.

Hepworth was mistaken, but finally we all lapsed into silence as the

best way out of the difficulty, since the defilement was beyond

question.

The weather continued so rough that we were a long time in doubt whether

we should be able to stop on our way, as nowhere along the coast was

there a sheltered harbour. Only with great difficulty did we disembark

for a few hours at Kerasoun and at Samsoun, the seat of large tobacco

factories. At Samsoun we reviewed the school-children and saw for the

first time a primitive type of plough, and carts with solid wooden

wheels drawn by oxen—varying probably little from those in use in the

time of Abraham.

Trebizond is picturesquely situated on the shore of the Black Sea at the

mouth of the River Moutschka, at the base of a chain of mountains rising

gradually to an altitude of 1600 metres, culminating in the thickly

wooded Kotal Dagh, 3410 metres high. Even here there is no harbour, and

in stress of weather ships have to seek refuge at Platana, two hours and

a half distant by steam. The city forms the starting-point of the

caravans to Persia; but these have now strong competitors in the Russian

railway from Batoum and the caravans from the Persian Gulf. In

consequence of these developments the traffic of the interior is

declining. Yet Trebizond remains, next to Smyrna, the most important

city of Asiatic Turkey, and previous to the Armenian disturbances of the

years 1895–96 contained a population of 35,000 inhabitants. At that

time, however, a large migration to Russia and Constantinople began, and

this was still in progress when we arrived there. More than half of the

population consisted of Moslems, with 8000 Greeks and 6000 Armenians,

the lower classes being the so-called Lazis, an unruly tribe, from whom

the Turks draw their best sailors. Trebizond has an Armenian Archbishop

and twenty Christian churches, as well as an American missionary

station. All the Turkish mosques were once Christian places of worship.

We were sitting in the dining-room of the Hôtel d’Italie looking out

upon the dark waters of the Black Sea rolling menacingly far away to the

horizon, when a dark-bearded, slimly built man with a low forehead and

ferret-like eyes approached us. He was a Russian Armenian, a doctor of

medicine, who had come to Trebizond to set up in practice. He did not

care a fig for politics and was silent. He was absorbed in his own

profession—that of getting on in the world.

Prominent in his quaint costume and mannerism was a young professor of

philology from a university of Northern Europe. He was about twenty-five

years of age and believed he knew everything worth knowing in geography,

philology, and politics. His sympathies were all with the Christian

“brothers.” He had come over from Russia, where, in the pursuit of his

philological calling, he had rummaged over the worm-eaten parchments of

sundry Christian monasteries, and had caught from these the current term

of “brothers”—meaning that the lowliest Christian is a “brother,” and

the Moslem Turk at best an infidel stranger. He laid down the law

without hesitation. “I never condemn a whole people,” he exclaimed; “I

say that the vices of a people are always the fault of an autocratic

Government.” Here was a specimen of the learned European, caught young

in Turkey, returning home with all the kudos which a few months—or even

years—added to a smattering familiarity with Oriental languages, can

confer, to be looked upon by his friends as an authority on the Eastern

question, and possibly, later on, to champion the claims of the

suffering “brothers” in the East in the legislative Chamber of his

native land!

The sun had sunk in the west. It was twilight and we were sitting alone,

when there entered an American missionary. A few preliminaries revealed

the fact that we had to deal with a worthy, excellent man, past middle

age—a teacher of the Gospel whose range of interests did not necessarily

exclude politics.

“Yes, sir, it is a hard, laborious life, but we keep pegging away,” he

said in the course of conversation. “No newspapers, railways, or

telegraphs: no means of communication with one’s friends. It is like

living in another world. And what a cesspool it is—fifty feet deep, and,

do what we may, we can only disinfect the surface. Formerly, when I

first came here, thirty years ago, it was very different. We were

encouraged to work, and enjoyed every liberty; also we largely increased

the number of our flock; but now,” he added despondently, “it is all

reaction.”

“No wonder,” I rejoined, “the past has bred revolution.”

“Yes, I admit there has been a revolutionary movement, but not fostered

by us. We have always inculcated obedience to the authorities.”

“But do I understand you rightly that a well-known revolutionist was one

of your pupils?”

“Yes, and I always refused to believe that he had anything to do with

the revolutionists.”

“Do you refuse to believe so now?”

“No, I am grieved to say.”

“Now tell me,” I continued, “how are things over in Russia—a Christian

country?”

“Far worse than here,” he answered in excited tones. “The Russians are

much more intolerant—much more reactionary than the Turks. Why, if the

Russians ever come here, they will turn us missionaries neck and crop

out of the country.”

Thereupon we parted, and I left the hotel in search of a breath of fresh

air and came upon an Israelite.

“Why, sir,” he began, “those Armenians are an accursed race. To think of

the position which they once held in Turkey, after having managed, in

the course of generations, to get nearly all the wealth of the country

into their hands, and to fill some of the best paid appointments! If

they had ventured to play their revolutionary game in Russia, the

Russians would not have left a man of them alive. I tell you they are

accursed. In our Jewish hooks it is written—written three thousand years

ago—that they shall not prosper, that their seed shall be wasted.”

* * * * *

Among the men who were credited with a large share in the cruel measures

of repression said to have been carried out by different Turkish high

officials against the Armenians, the name of Marshal Chakir Pasha,

Imperial Commissioner for the introduction of reforms in Anatolia, stood

foremost. The story that the Marshal, who was at Erzeroum in the month

of October 1895, at the time of the Armenian rising, had, like a human

bloodhound, stood, watch in hand, when asked for orders, and decided

that the work of knocking the Armenians on the head was to continue for

another hour and a half—some versions say two hours—went almost the

round of the world. It was told to me in Constantinople by a person of

distinction and impartiality, and although this did not amount to proof

positive, I could hardly resist the conviction that there must be

something in the tale, bearing in mind the exceptional source of my

information. I had also heard that more than one of the diplomatic

representatives of the Great Powers at Constantinople, notably Sir

Philip Currie, had repeatedly but vainly urged the Sultan to recall the

Marshal. I was therefore in a somewhat expectant frame of mind when I

learnt that the redoubtable pasha was staying in Trebizond with his

whole staff. Its principal members consisted of Hassib Effendi, formerly

Turkish Consul-General at Tiflis in the Caucasus, and since in like

capacity at Teheran; Danish Bey, formerly First Secretary of the Turkish

Embassy at St. Petersburg; and Demeter Mavrocordato Effendi.

Marshal Chakir Pasha had had a distinguished career. Educated at the

military school of Pancaldi, at Constantinople, he was afterwards

attached to the Turkish état-major. Quitting that post after a time, he

entered the Administrative Department, and became within a short space

of time Governor in succession of Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Bagdad.

Subsequently he rejoined the army, and held a command in Montenegro

during the war, and later on was present at the memorable Shipka Pass

battles. After the Russo-Turkish war Chakir returned to Constantinople,

and was sent as Turkish Ambassador to St. Petersburg, where he remained

for twelve years, and where, so the Russian Consul-General at Erzeroum

assured me, he saw the Marshal, the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps,

leading the polonaise with the Empress Dagmar as a partner.

Since then Chakir Pasha had been civil and military governor of Crete,

and previous to his latest appointment he had been nominated member of

the High Military Commission of Inspection, which sat under the

presidency of the Sultan at the Palace of Yildiz.

I felt somewhat abashed at the thought of asking such a man a series of

questions closely affecting his personal honour. But Chakir himself made

my task easy by his well-bred urbanity. He was a short, stout,

full-bearded, distinguished-looking man of about sixty years of age,

with massive features and bright keen eyes, denoting intelligence and

capacity for hard work. I called on him at his official residence with

Mavrocordato Effendi, and found him in a small, sparsely furnished

apartment, sitting at a plain writing-table, the other members of his

staff being also present and seated round the table.

After coffee and a few preliminary remarks, I told the Marshal frankly

that I had heard the story of the watch, and that I hoped he would

kindly excuse my asking him the true facts of the case. He took my

question in very good part, and said in reply that he was perfectly

cognizant of the tale, but that he had never considered it incumbent

upon himself to take official notice of it—any other notice being, of

course, in his position, out of the question. However, he could assure

me, he added with a smile, that when the story first reached Erzeroum

people who knew the facts of the case smiled at the idea. He could only

advise me not to take his assurance one way or the other, but, as I was

going to Erzeroum, to make my own inquiries.

Encouraged by the Marshal’s manner, I then asked him: “I have been told

that a large amount of the trouble in Kurdistan was owing to the Kurds

having been armed by the Turkish Government, and that it was your

Excellency with whom this measure originated.”

“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “the Kurds have always been more or

less armed, and have often used their arms against the Turkish

Government, as you are doubtless aware. The idea of arming the Kurds in

a homogeneous military fashion, which has led to the formation of the

Hamadiè cavalry regiments (about 40,000 to 50,000 strong), belongs to

Marshal Zeki Pasha, the Commander of Erzingian. The Sultan approved of

the idea, which was intended to furnish a counterpoise to the Russian

Cossack regiments, and asked me to work out the plan, which I did at

Constantinople, in my capacity of member of the military commission at

Yildiz. I even candidly admit that my sympathies are with these

regiments—after all, they are my own countrymen.” The Marshal repeated

this in a quiet tone of almost apologetic modesty, which had something

quaintly touching in its simplicity, and set me thinking how very few

men in a similar high position in other countries would have

condescended to enter thus into details. I could not help feeling drawn

towards the old soldier.

Chakir Pasha was not a man of many words, and several of those present

now joined in the conversation, which became general. Only once did the

Marshal interpose in a quiet but decisive manner. Danish Bey was in the

midst of relating some incident, and suddenly stopped short, for some

reason or other, whereupon the Marshal said: “Continue, tell him

everything—il n’y a rien à cacher.”

As I was personally acquainted with many well-known Turkish officers and

diplomatists, our conversation had plenty of points of mutual interest.

However, in what follows I only give a résumé of what may interest the

outside world. Part of what I have to relate was told in the Marshal’s

presence, he now and then putting in a word or making some verbal

correction, whilst some of the details were given me later in the

evening at the hotel by the members of his staff and by other persons

later at Erzeroum. I give the facts exactly as they were stated to me by

individuals who one and all held responsible positions, and who, in our

personal intercourse, which lasted several days, made the impression

upon me of being honourable, cultivated men of the world. According to

my informants, the original troubles at Trebizond had begun two years

previously as a consequence of members of the Armenian revolutionary

committee firing in broad daylight on Hamid Pasha, the commander of the

garrison, and Bahri Pasha, Governor-General of Van, who happened to be

at Trebizond at the time, and was walking with Razi Khan, the Persian

Consul-General. Both pashas were wounded.

“With regard to the interior, signs of coming trouble were apparent a

long time back. In some districts, where the Kurdish chiefs had been

accustomed for centuries past to do all their business with the Armenian

merchants and bankers in the towns, their mutual relations were of the

most cordial character. The Kurds were even in the habit of staying in

the houses of their Armenian friends when they came to town. Gradually a

change came over the scene. The Kurds met strange faces in the towns,

and the manner of the Armenian merchants visibly changed. Russian

Armenian journalists from Tiflis became regular visitors, and the

assumption is that they influenced the Armenian element in the direction

of discontent and revolt. That they were able to do so is the more

unaccountable as the Armenian language and the Armenian schools have

always been entirely free, and in Turkey the Armenians are exempted from

military service—a most distasteful profession to them—on paying a

nominal sum. Moreover, the Armenians have been able, in the course of

centuries, to gather into their hands the greater part of the wealth of

the country. The Armenian ‘bakal,’ or village grocer, holds a great

number of the Turkish peasantry in the perpetual bondage of usury. In

Russia, on the other hand, the Armenians are rigorously drafted into the

army, and are generally sent to serve their time in districts far away

from their homes, while their schools and their language are interfered

with by a severe censorship.

“When the insurrectionary movement was ripe, the men who appeared on the

scene gave themselves the name of ‘Fedaïs,’ or the ‘Sacrificed for the

country.’ This is the sobriquet which the notorious Armenian

revolutionist, Daniel Tschoueh, applied to himself. Under the pretext of

saving his country he roamed through the vilayet of Sivas, where he

committed acts of brigandage. And yet this very man was so deficient in

physical courage that he died of fear the very day he was brought before

the gendarmerie of Sivas. He was originally employed in the mines of

Kara Hissar Charki, in the district of the vilayet of Sivas. Among other

atrocities which he committed was the murder of the representative of

the Procureur-Général of Kara Hissar Charki, as well as his wife and

children, on the road to Sivas.

“With regard to the reforms which have since been introduced, it is as

well the world should know that the Armenians are only willing to accept

such as conform easiest with their idiosyncrasies. But when it is a

question of their undertaking obligations which involve certain

hardships, such as the post of gendarme, they simply refuse to serve the

Imperial Government. It is extremely difficult to find Armenians to

serve as gendarmes, and this notwithstanding that the Imperial

Government offers them all sorts of inducements. For not only are they

well paid, but they are held to be doing military service in acting as

gendarmes and are thus freed from the tax for exemption from military

service. Instead of serving in the above capacity they prefer posts

which offer chances of making money without hard work. Thus they are

very eager to be appointed adjunct (muavin) to the kaimakan or to other

more or less lucrative official posts.”

Chakir Pasha’s mission had been to travel all through Kurdistan for the

last two years, and the following interesting statements were made

sporadically in the further course of my conversations with his suite:

“One of the most remarkable features of this Armenian rebellion was the

marvellous rapidity with which news spread among Mussulmans and

Armenians alike. Thus, hardly had Sir Philip Currie in the autumn of

1895 telegraphed to Erzeroum to the _locum tenens_ of the British Consul

that the Sultan had accepted the proposals of the Powers than the

gentleman in charge asked for the telegram and interpreted it as

portending Armenian autonomy. A newspaper correspondent telegraphed from

London to Givon Schismanian, the Archbishop of Erzeroum, ‘Victoire

complète’ (Armenian: ‘Mouzaferiat berke mal’), and the news spread to

the farthest limits of Kurdistan. In some places the Kurds decided to

make a clean sweep of the Armenians. Chakir Pasha started immediately

for Khinis, on the road between Erzeroum and Bitlis, and persuaded the

Kurdish beys to remain quiet. Twenty-four hours later it might have been

too late.” In fact, according to statements of Chakir Pasha’s suite,

both here and elsewhere he saved many hundred lives by his prompt

measures.

The Armenians on their side, so I was assured, fêted the correspondent

who had championed their cause in a London newspaper as a national hero,

“Le Sauveur de l’Arménie.” The Armenians of Erzeroum presented him with

a pen set in brilliants; the Armenians of Tiflis gave him whole cases

full of presentation plate. The following was subsequently told me by

one of Chakir Pasha’s staff:

“We were staying at the government house in Van with Chakir Pasha at the

end of September ’96, when we were unexpectedly informed that the

hiding-place of the Armenian insurgents had been discovered. They had

entrenched themselves in the gardens of the Armenian quarter of the

town, and it would have been extremely difficult to get at them without

artillery. Chakir, fearing that the Mussulman population might get

beyond control if fighting was at once commenced, told off a large body

of troops to cut off the Armenian quarter from the other part of the

town. After this was done the Armenian revolutionists were driven out of

the town, losing a number of killed and wounded. In the meantime the

representative of the Armenian Bishop of Van called upon Chakir Pasha

and showed him a telegram which he proposed to send at once to Monsignor

Khrimyan, the Armenian _Catholikos_ of Etchmiadzin (in Russia), in which

he said that, while the Armenians had for six hundred years been

contented under the dominion of the Turks, people from abroad were now

coming to trouble their tranquillity, and he begged Monsignor Khrimyan

to use his influence to prevent such people from coming into the

country, as they could only do the Armenians harm. To this Chakir Pasha

replied that the telegram in itself was excellent, but it ought to have

been sent long ago, and not at the very moment when the insurgents had

been discovered by the authorities; that it was a matter of public

notoriety that these people had been in Van for two months past, and

that the Armenian community had been well aware of the fact, and ought

to have apprised the authorities, so that they might distinguish between

their friends and their enemies.”

Of the members of the suite of Chakir Pasha with whom I had

opportunities of talking the most interesting was Mavrocordato Effendi,

an Orthodox Catholic, and related to the Greek princely family of the

same name. He had previously been Turkish Consul-General at Liverpool

and at Barcelona, Secretary of the Turkish Embassy at Paris, etc., and

was a cultured European. He spoke English almost like an Englishman.

Community of meals for several days following in stormy, depressing

weather brought about mutual confidence and expansion of ideas.

Mavrocordato had not been able to see his young wife and child for

fifteen months, as he had accompanied Chakir Pasha in his mission right

through Anatolia, or Kurdistan—a country many Europeans will persist in

calling “Armenia.” He was a hard-working and zealous Turkish official,

with the breadth of view of a cultured man of the world.

“Yes,” he said in conversation, “the reforms desired by the Powers are

now introduced throughout Asiatic Turkey and in full working order. But

I do not think much of their practical value. Their spirit is already

contained in Turkish law, which is excellently adapted to the needs of

this part of the world. Of course we have had abuses: what country,

particularly what Eastern country, has not? But we are on the road to

improvement. The principal thing we want is a body of honest and capable

administrators and minor functionaries, and on your journey through the

country you will be able to convince yourself that among Turkish

officials in Anatolia the majority, especially among the new

appointments, are good men—a great improvement on the old order of

things.”

“But how about the rumours I hear of appointments depending on the

bribery of officials at the Palace in Constantinople?” I asked.

“Do I look like a man who has bribed his way through Palace officials?”

he replied. “There may be instances of bribery and peculation, but

hardly in connexion with these matters. What Asiatic Turkey is most

pressingly in need of are good roads and railways. At the present moment

the Mussulman population, which is far worse off than the Christian, is

very poor; and the richer the harvest, the poorer they are. For where

there is plenty prices decline, as there are no adequate means of

transport and no markets. But another difficulty which the Government

has to contend with in all its attempts at reform is the conservatism

which seems ingrained in everything and everybody Asiatic. It is this

that the diplomatists of Europe lose sight of when they, Penelope-like,

elaborate one plan of reform after another for the Turkish Empire over a

green baize table in some kiosk on the Bosphorus. A little incident will

illustrate this. The Sultan sends a capable official to some distant

province as kaimakan, or prefect. He has been educated at

Constantinople, at the École Civile. He is scrupulously honest, in touch

with modern ideas, enthusiastically devoted to his work, and anxious to

benefit the people under his care. He endeavours to introduce reforms,

beginning with the improvement of the roads of the town where he

officially resides. He calls upon the inhabitants to contribute towards

this good work. Result: the Mohammedans and the Armenian population join

hands and petition the Government to have the kaimakan removed. He is a

modern man: they prefer the old-fashioned do-nothing type of official.”

Such was the information my companion and I gathered on the eve of our

plunge into the Asiatic domains of the Sultan from some of the men who

had been responsible there for the maintenance of order. The time had

come for departure. We had spent several days at Trebizond inspecting

the bazaar and making some purchases of stores, Dr. Hepworth and myself

ordering each a warm sheepskin fur—such as are worn by the peasants and

camel-drivers—and after having engaged some tumble-down vehicles and

horses, we started on the long journey through the interior of the

country to Erzeroum—a matter of eight to ten days’ travelling. We took

leave of every comfort associated with civilization, such as beds,

washing-basins, even tables and chairs, which we only came upon again at

the end of our journey at Alexandretta.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER V

JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY: II

My mother Earth!

And thou, fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,

Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.

And thou, the bright eye of the Universe,

That openest over all, and unto all

Art a delight—thou shin’st not on my heart.

BYRON

ON leaving Trebizond the winding road rises gradually until you reach

the tableland of the Taurus, the so-called Armenian Highlands. We took

one last look at the Black Sea from a height before it was lost to

sight, dark and menacing with its ships lying at anchor.

A feature which struck me with surprise shortly after leaving Trebizond

were the Christian monasteries which we passed at intervals, perched

high up on the ridge of the hills on either side of us. We were told

that they had been tenanted by monks from time immemorial, and that they

still inhabit them. Surely here was ocular demonstration in favour of

Mohammedan tolerance, since, if the much-spoken-of fanaticism of the

Turk had any tangible existence, these monasteries could not possibly

have remained unmolested, undefiled, inhabited right through the many

centuries during which the country has belonged to the Turks.

Another feature of our journey, which, however, only presented itself to

us later on, was equally a matter of surprise to us—imbued as we were

with the notion that peaceable Armenians were in daily fear for their

lives and property right through the country. We frequently met whole

Armenian families, men, women, and children, the women sitting astride

their horses, travelling on the road without weapons of any kind.

It was a novel sensation to arrive in the evening at a miserable shed, a

barn, a stable, mostly without any windows or other ventilation, termed

a “han,” in which oxen, buffaloes, and camels were quartered, and to be

told that we were expected to pass the night there. But such was

destined to be, with few exceptions, our nightly experience for the next

few weeks.

On emerging from our stable one morning, long before sunrise, we could

scarcely see a yard in front of us. We were surrounded by a thick mist.

It rose from an encampment of camels, buffaloes, and horses immediately

facing us. It appeared that they had arrived in the evening after us,

and, finding the “han” occupied by our party, had camped out all night

in the open. The bitter cold had acted in the manner described, causing

clouds of steam to rise from the bodies of the animals.

Our first station of any note was a place called Gumysch Hanè, a name

which denoted that silver mines were or had been worked in the

neighbourhood. Here we changed our carriages for saddle-horses, with

which next morning we crossed the Zigana Pass—6000 feet high and one of

the most perilous sections of our journey now that in the winter, owing

to the snow, the road, at its best little better than a bridle-path, was

narrowed to the breadth of a mere wooden plank, with yawning ravines on

the off-side of us. It was here that we met the most thrilling

experiences of our whole journey—namely, the encountering of caravans of

mules, camels, and droves of sheep proceeding in the opposite direction.

We were told that only a short time previously on this road a number of

camels connected together by ropes had lost their footing and been

precipitated into the abyss below. Here I cannot resist the temptation

of quoting a passage describing Professor Vambéry’s experience over the

same road, as it exactly tallies with my own: “On our way we met a long

line of over-loaded mules descending amidst the wild screams of their

Persian drivers. It is a rare sight to watch them advancing with the

utmost care, without any accident upon the slippery path cut into the

rock, scarcely two spans wide, flanked by the bottomless abyss. And yet

it is a very unusual thing for a mule to be precipitated into the abyss

yawning along the path. If ever it happens it is in winter. The danger

is greatest when two caravans happen to meet face to face. In order to

avoid such an encounter big bells, heard at a great distance, are used

by them, warning the caravans to keep out of each other’s way. The

continuously steep ascent lasted over four hours. There is hardly a

worse road in all Asia, yet this is the only commercial road which

connects Armenia with Persia, nay, Central Asia with the West. During

the summer hundreds of thousands of these animals are traversing this

route, going and coming, loaded with the products of Asia and the

manufactures of Europe.”[6]

Footnote 6:

“Arminius Vambéry: Life and Adventures.” London, 1890: pp. 38–39.

Thus our feeling of relief was great when we had happily crossed the

Zigana Pass without further trouble than the anxious moments involved in

dodging the camels, mules, and sheep we met; their tinkling bells

warning us of their approach, whilst we in our turn warned them with our

own bells hanging at our horses’ necks. There was only one critical

moment, at least for me, when my horse became restive, for it looked as

if intent on negotiating the abyss. I rose in my stirrup, ready to jump

off on the inside, so as to allow of my mount taking the fatal leap

alone.

On the evening of November 21 we arrived at Baiburt, the largest town in

the Armenian Highlands after Erzeroum, from which it is still 105

kilometres away. Baiburt is about 1638 metres above sea-level, and

occupies an important commercial and strategic position. It is situated

on the fringe of the Armenian Highlands and the Pontine mountain range,

and forms a connecting link between the two. Previous to the

Russo-Turkish war of 1877 it possessed 10,000 inhabitants, which have

since diminished to about one-half. It had also been taken by the

Russians under General Paskiewitsch in 1828, and had suffered severely.

An observant German traveller,[7] visiting the place nearly seventy

years ago, before the present German fashion of treating everything

Turkish as _couleur de rose_, described Baiburt as giving one a

foretaste of “those desolate, decayed, half-ruined, and nearly deserted

towns which, from here right throughout the whole of Asiatic Turkey up

to the Persian frontier, form a sequence of progressive misery.” These

words require little variation to describe the appearance of the place

when we came there. For instance, we were assured that there was not a

single qualified doctor in the town. And yet, although a

poverty-stricken place, it was still possible to meet with people

bearing expensive weapons on their person, for, like the nomads of old,

the Asiatic Turk usually carries all his portable property about with

him. At least, so much might be inferred from the fact that I bought a

beautiful damascene dagger with a solid silver sheath and handle from a

servant for six Turkish pounds.

Footnote 7:

Reisen von Moritz Wagner. Leipzig, 1852.

We started early next morning, having exchanged saddle-horses for

sledges, and arrived at sunset at our destination, another wretched

“han” at the foot of the renowned Kop Dagh, which we were to cross in

the morning, the pass being 8000 feet above sea-level. The summit is

variously given as between 10,000 and 11,000 feet above sea-level. Owing

to the danger of being delayed by snow-drifts, relays of workmen were

engaged during the night to clear a path for our sleighs through the

snow. It was arranged that we should start before daybreak, between four

and five in the morning. The journey turned out to be a somewhat

exciting affair. We started by the dim light of lanterns, first crossing

a frozen stream. Our horses, at times up to their bodies in snow, had

the greatest difficulty; at others our sleighs were repeatedly on the

point of turning over and landing us in the unknown. Luckily, we were

not troubled with the boisterous wind we had feared we might encounter

at the summit; and after several hours of laborious ascent we crossed

the pass in all safety, if not in comfort, owing to the bitter cold of

that region. In the course of the day we met a solitary horseman on his

way to the pass. He was a Canadian missionary, with whom we exchanged

greetings.

Travellers unite in describing the scenery in this part of the Armenian

Highlands as of surpassing beauty. In the winter we saw nothing of the

wonderful effects of atmosphere and colour which form such a striking

feature of the country, as the whole landscape up to the horizon was one

mass of snow-covered mountains, somewhat resembling in character and

outline the broad convex cupolas of a Turkish mosque, say the Aja Sophia

of Constantinople.

As the sun breaks in the early morning on the Kop Dagh, a vision

presents itself to the eye as of the bursting forth of the light of

heaven. It reminded me of some of the most ambitious efforts of Gustave

Doré in his illustrations of the Bible.

Look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

_Merchant of Venice_, v.

Arrived at the summit of the pass, the endless panorama of a

snow-covered, undulating tableland at our feet is as that of a mythical

world, majestic, almost terrible in the total absence of all human

habitations as far as the eye could reach towards the horizon—weird in

its vast expanse, all covered with snow.

We reached Erzeroum in the afternoon of November 24. The grim-looking

old fortress was dimly perceptible from afar through the dry wintry

mist, dominated by a background of hills rising considerably higher than

the plateau upon which it is situated. As we drew near, our cavalcade

careered along _ventre à terre_, the horses of our cavalry escort

foaming and bleeding at the mouth as their riders urged them on at a

furious pace in order to enable us to reach our destination before

dark—the only instance in all our journey when I saw horses at all

hardly used. Here, as later at Bitlis and Diarbekir, our arrival had

been expected: the roofs of the houses were crowded with

inhabitants—women and children among them—eager to obtain a sight of the

remarkable visitors as our cortège drove past and proceeded through the

narrow streets to our quarters at one of the public offices or konaks in

the town. Our camp-beds were promptly fixed up and we could look for a

few days’ rest after the exertions of our journey. Here we found

ourselves in the interior of Asia.

Professor Vambéry, visiting Erzeroum more than fifty years ago, gives a

depressing description of the place. The houses were already built in

Eastern fashion, the walls of stone and mud running irregularly in

zigzag line, with windows looking out in the yard rather than the

street, secret entrances, and other little things characteristic of

Eastern houses.[8] “Evidences of the poverty of the inhabitants of

Erzeroum meet the eye in whatever direction one may look. The dirt, the

squalor, and the underground dwellings are unbearable. The smell of

their food, which they cook by the fire made of a fuel called tezek

(cattle dung), is especially loathsome.” This description tallies with

our own experience. The hardships we had undergone—notably the

unpalatable food spread out before us on the ground—quickened our

longing to arrive at Erzeroum, which, to our imagination, fired by the

contrast we expected it to offer to the places we had passed through,

already presented itself in glowing colours. Dr. Hepworth and I had

ceased to enjoy a meal long before we reached Erzeroum, and had it not

been that M. Maximow, the Russian Consul, generously lent us his

Armenian cook, who accompanied us during the remainder of our journey,

we both might well have succumbed to its hardships.

Footnote 8:

“Life and Adventures of Arminius Vambéry.” London, 1890: p. 41.

Erzeroum is the capital of the vilayet of that name, and is situated on

a plateau thirty-eight kilometres long by twenty-two broad, stretched

out at an altitude of 6000 feet above sea-level. It is dominated by

mountains of even greater altitude, near to which the Kara Sua, or

Western Euphrates, has its source not far from the city. The town is a

very old settlement. The word “Erzeroum” is a corruption of

“Arzen-er-rum,” _i.e._ the town of Arzen of the Romans—in

contradistinction to a neighbouring town of the same name which was a

Syro-Armenian settlement in antiquity. In the beginning of the fifth

century of our era Erzeroum was converted into a fortress by Anatolius,

one of the generals of Theodosius the Younger, in honour of whom it was

christened Theodosiopolis, a name it retained until the middle of the

eleventh century. In more recent times it has been repeatedly occupied

by the Russians, as in 1829 and 1878. To-day Erzeroum has 39,000

inhabitants, half of which are made up of Armenians, Persians, and a few

Greeks. Persia, Russia, England, and the United States are represented

by Consuls. It also contains a missionary station. Erzeroum is

approached by a modern but rudely constructed chaussée.

We had looked forward to visiting the bazaar, in the hope of being able

to get hold of some bargains in rare coins, old Turkish swords or

daggers; but we were doomed to disappointment here, as also later on at

Bitlis and Diarbekir. Whatever may have been the chances of bargains in

times gone by, there was nothing left worth picking up when we were

there. Of greater interest than the bazaar was the street in which the

sword-makers plied their trade beside each other as in their guilds in

the Middle Ages. They worked according to primitive methods, with rude

tools and weighing scales, but apparently under dignified independent

conditions, and seemed to take a pride in their art, which allowed of a

workman putting his best efforts into his work and claiming a price in

accordance therewith. They showed us some beautiful specimens of

damascene blades and gold-inlay work, which induced us to have our names

inscribed in Turkish characters by the same process on the barrels of

our Winchester rifles. But even their trade, we were told, is not what

it used to be. Many of their best workmen (Armenians) had emigrated to

Russia, though some had since returned. Altogether the influence of

Russia loomed large over the place. The driver of our sleigh, an elderly

man, had been a prisoner in Russia. We were told there was a great

scarcity of wood in the district, but though there are plenty of forests

over the borders in Russia, the Russian authorities would not allow the

timber to be exported to Turkey, as they pursued a policy of “drying up”

all Turkish means of communication.

We next passed through a street almost monopolized by black amber

workers. They drew their raw material from Persia, beyond Lake Van, but

here again the workmen told us sadly that they had to procure their

tools from Russia. Altogether, I gained the impression that the “Double

Eagle” would not have much trouble in ousting the “Crescent” from these

parts; though the more intelligent of the community, and, significant to

note, Armenians among them, did not view the prospect with favour. The

maligned Turk, if hopelessly backward from a practical point of view, is

yet in many ways more pliable and conciliatory than the Russian. The

market-place, with its endless array of carts and booths, was largely

peopled by Persians, who do most of the carrying trade, the retailing

business being here, as elsewhere, in the hands of the Armenians. Of

Jews there was hardly any trace. We were told that they could not

compete with the Armenians.

It would be difficult for people living under European conditions to

realize the prestige which our party enjoyed in these distant parts. For

the moment we figured as direct ambassadors from the Sultan and the

public opinion of the outer world, thus eclipsing the status of the

Governor-General himself. And yet in some respects there was a natural

homeliness about our intercourse which is usually foreign to the Western

world. Thus, when we had finished our dinner, at which we were waited

upon by a host of servants—our six cavalry sergeants among others—and

rose from our seats, those who had waited upon us sat down quite

naturally in the places we had just vacated and proceeded to take their

own dinner from the rich supply of viands left on the table as almost a

matter of course. Nor did this unusual familiarity detract in the least

from the extreme deference and goodwill with which we were waited upon

by everybody deputed to our service.

With the object of our journey in view we called successively upon Mr.

Graves, the British Consul; Mohamed Cherif Reouf Pasha, the

Governor-General (Vali); M. Roqueferrier, the French Consul; and M. V.

Maximov, the Russian Consul-General. To each of these gentlemen we put

the question whether he believed in the truth of the tale about Chakir

Pasha and the watch-in-hand episode. M. Roqueferrier ridiculed the

story. “Ce sont des histoires inventées à plaisir,” he said, and added a

few words of high personal appreciation of Chakir Pasha.

The Russian Consul, M. Maximov, said: “It is not my business to deny the

truth of such tales. All I can tell you is, ‘que Chakir Pasha est un

brave homme—un homme de très bon cœur.’ I have known him for years, he

is a friend of mine.” Mr. Graves, the British Consul, said: “I was not

here at the time, nor have I spoken to Chakir Pasha about the matter,

but the Vali assured me that it was not true, and that is quite

sufficient for me, as I should believe implicitly any personal statement

of Reouf Pasha.”

“Do you believe that any massacres would have taken place if no Armenian

revolutionaries had come into the country and incited the Armenian

population to rebellion?” I asked Mr. Graves.

“Certainly not,” he replied. “I do not believe that a single Armenian

would have been killed.”

Mr. Graves is a weighty authority, and if he is in Turkey to-day I feel

sure he will not object to my citing him in this important matter.

Let it suffice, we did not meet a single person in Erzeroum, whatever

his nationality, race, or creed might have been, who attached the

slightest credence to a story which, cunningly invented and circulated

broadcast, not only cruelly slandered a man of integrity, but did a deal

of harm to his country in the public opinion of the world.

The position of Vali or Governor-General of a Turkish province has come

to be associated with an unenviable notoriety in the estimation of a

large section of the European public. Not unnaturally, a great share of

the responsibility for the wild vengeance of the mob rests with those

invested with supreme authority, and where the person wielding this

authority has been unequal to its grave responsibilities rumour has

stepped in and has credited Turkish officials in general with every

imaginable crime.

There are doubtless bad Valis as there are bad men in other stations of

life, and we were on the look-out for one in order to make an example of

him. Alas that I can only give my experience of a good Vali, Mohamed

Cherif Reouf Pasha, Governor-General of the first-class vilayet of

Erzeroum.

When General Grant visited Jerusalem, he found Reouf Pasha in the

position of Governor of that wonderful city. A strong friendship sprang

up between the thin-lipped, taciturn general and the suave, courtly, and

yet most simple-mannered pasha. Their meeting had taken place many years

previously, but Reouf still loved to talk of Grant, whom he recognized

as one of the few truly great men he had come across in his lifetime.

And as for Grant’s opinion of Reouf, I understand from a reliable source

that, before leaving Jerusalem, Grant assured him that if he were again

elected President of the United States, he would ask the Sultan to send

him as Turkish Minister to Washington.

Reouf Pasha belongs to one of the oldest Turkish families. His father,

Osman Pasha, was Governor-General of Bosnia during the last ten years of

his life. Reouf Pasha was educated at home, under the care of special

tutors, and later on his father sent him to Paris to complete his

studies. Among the successive appointments of a long and honourable

career may be mentioned those of kaimakan and moutesarrif in Roumelia,

Bosnia, and Syria, and twelve years’ governorship of Jerusalem—one of

the most difficult posts in the Empire. From thence Reouf Pasha was sent

to Beirut as Governor-General, then in succession to Damascus, Bitlis,

and Kharput, displaying everywhere the qualities of justice and mercy.

His activity was ceaseless, and order followed his advent everywhere. He

was appointed to his present very responsible and onerous position just

one week prior to the breaking out of the Armenian rebellion in October

1895.

In the following words I endeavour to sum up the information I gained

from various sources, notably the Consular representatives in Erzeroum,

concerning Reouf Pasha’s work as Vali of that province.

“Those who have carefully watched the Governor-General in his endeavours

to stay the misfortunes of those black hours, to limit their area and

repair the damage done, cannot resist the impression that no trouble

whatever would have taken place if he had had time to guard against it.

“When Reouf Pasha was appointed to Erzeroum it was already too late. He

did what could be done to stop the impending evil, sending the soldiers

and gendarmes to the most threatened spots, arresting pillaging Kurds

and having them summarily shot, notably those who had come from the

vilayet of Bitlis and had advanced as far as Kighi. Reouf Pasha caused

between eighty and ninety Mohammedan Turks to be shot during those

critical days.

“As soon as the murderous crisis had subsided Reouf Pasha did all in his

power to make amends for the damage done. He caused searching

investigations to be made all over Erzeroum, and wherever stolen

property was found it was restored to its rightful owners. A large

portion of what had been pillaged was taken away from the pillagers and

delivered back. He also organized a public subscription, the amount of

which enabled over four hundred mechanics to resume their occupation.

“Once tranquillity was restored, Reouf Pasha reorganized the gendarmerie

and the police so effectually that whilst they were kept more strictly

in hand than ever before, they were most successful in arresting a

number of Armenian agents-provocateurs and revolutionary emissaries,

such notably as Aram Aramian and Armenak Dermonprejan. In the affair of

Alidjekrek, in 1896, a number of Armenian revolutionists came over the

Russian frontier towards Alaskird. Reouf Pasha, informed in time, sent a

body of gendarmes to meet them, with the result that three were killed

and the remainder took flight back to Russia.

“A number of secret stores of arms in different places—Passen, Sitaouk,

etc.—were discovered by the vigilance of Reouf’s police, and were safely

stowed away. I myself saw some of the muskets seized—they bore a Russian

inscription.

“All these results are most satisfactory, and have been obtained

quietly, without exciting the feelings of the Mohammedan population.

Since Reouf Pasha has been here it can be said that justice is handled

in the most satisfactory manner. Several of the Courts of Justice which

were in need of a broom have been swept, and now work perfectly. A

number of corrupt officials have been made an example of—notably the

former commissary of police. In a word, all classes of the population

unite in recognizing the beneficent activity of the present Vali of

Erzeroum, respecting whose government an English Blue Book contains the

following: ‘The Vilayet of Erzeroum may be given as a model of

administration among the governorships of Asiatic Turkey.’”

The following instance was told me of an Armenian being chosen for

preferment by the Vali. He was the second commissary of police at

Erzeroum, and had proved himself to be so efficient an officer all

through the political troubles that Reouf procured for him the

commandership of the order of Medjediè, and also a brevet rank equal to

that of major in the Army.

Thus far the information given to me, the main correctness of which I

feel I can vouch for.

I was privileged to meet his Excellency on several occasions during our

stay in Erzeroum, and nothing could exceed his unvaried courtesy and

affability. Even more than this, he showed a positive anxiety that I

should accept no statement from him uncorroborated by independent

testimony. Through his kindness every channel of information, whether

Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, or Turk, was unreservedly set at my disposal.

His pet phrase was: “Si c’est la vérité, dites-le!”

In my personal intercourse with Reouf Pasha I was struck by the

extraordinary contrast between his quiet, even gentle manners and the

great energy he was credited with. There was little mutual esteem

between him and Chakir Pasha. To the mind of the mild, gentle-voiced

administrator, the hardy soldier who had been credited with all sorts of

dreadful energy was not energetic enough. The characteristic feature of

Reouf Pasha’s energy seems to have been that it enabled him to

conciliate—to turn an enemy into a friend.

Before leaving Erzeroum, we paid a visit to the Armenian school, which

is organized on the German plan and includes a commercial and classical

curriculum. It had at that time one hundred and thirty-four pupils. It

was a bitterly cold day, the playground had been flooded and was a sheet

of ice, and a number of boys and grown-ups were skating. One of the

masters told me that the whole “American Colony” of Erzeroum came to

skate there. I asked “What Americans?” and discovered that there was

absolutely only one _bonâ-fide_ American in the whole city at that

particular moment, and he was Mr. Leo Bergholz, the American Consul, and

even he was not a Christian, being of the Jewish persuasion; moreover,

he had not yet received his official exequatur. The so-called American

Colony consisted entirely of Armenians who had acquired American

citizenship and flaunted their cheaply gained nationality in the face of

the Turkish authorities.

Later on, at Alexandretta, when our dragoman became ill, an “American”

doctor was called in to attend him, and turned out to be a dark Syrian

Armenian—a thoroughbred Asiatic. These facts in themselves were not

necessarily of a mischievous kind; but nobody who has travelled in those

parts can be ignorant of the capital made by these strange Americans out

of their exotic nationality, and the trouble they occasionally give to

the Turkish authorities by their pretensions, quite independent of the

fact that many of these so-called “Americans” were in touch, as they

doubtless were in full sympathy, with the Armenian revolutionary

movement.

We were heartily glad to leave Erzeroum, for among other inconveniences

we found the air so rarefied that the slightest exertion would increase

the heart’s action and produce a sense of fatigue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER VI

JOURNEY THROUGH ASIATIC TURKEY: III

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak—such was the process;

And of the cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.

SHAKESPEARE, _Othello_

WE left Erzeroum on the road to Bitlis in sleighs, roughly constructed

from unplaned trunks of trees, which we exchanged for saddle-horses at

the first station we stopped at.

Shortly after leaving Erzeroum all vestige of roads whatsoever vanished

from our ken, and when we came up with a river—for instance, the Tigris,

here called the Murad Su or Black Water—it was always a case of being

obliged to ford across, for whatever bridges we saw were in ruins.

Neither tree, shrub, nor verdure of any kind met the eye—a perfect

wilderness, a country in which, as the Germans say, “the foxes bid

good-night to each other, as there is nothing to be got for any of

them.”

Our Armenian cook Migirditch proved a treasure, more indispensable to

us, as it turned out, than our doctor, whose services, fortunately,

neither Dr. Hepworth nor I culled into requisition during the whole of

our journey. This man would gallop alone ahead and reach our evening’s

destination long before us; for our usual rate of progress could

scarcely have exceeded three to four miles an hour. Thus we had not to

wait when we arrived, but found a well-prepared meal ready for us. How

he managed to find his way when there were no visible roads remains a

mystery to me to this day. Altogether, the efficiency, the general

readiness of this man, the only one of our party who had a notion how to

prepare food in European fashion, furnished an excellent illustration of

the adaptability of the Armenians. It helped to explain and justify

their ambition to rise in the world out of their easy-going

surroundings. Indeed, it is only fair to state that throughout our whole

journey the Armenians were the only section of the population which

seemed to be at all imbued with Carlyle’s gospel of work; which tends to

explain their unpopularity with the Turks on economic grounds.

We were not destined to see much of the fauna of the country, which is

said to consist of panthers, wolves, hyænas, and many species of the

feathered tribe, including buzzard and blackcock. Birds of prey we saw

in plenty, hovering in the air above us, chiefly vultures, the presence

of which was easily to be explained by the occasional carcasses of dead

horses and camels we passed on our way. One day a soldier of our escort

shot an eagle. It was only winged when it fell, and thus maimed, the

soldier brought it into the shed in which we were lying, where it

fluttered about, beating its wings. It was not a pleasant sight to see

the noble bird, the emblem of imperial power, being beaten to death in

our presence.

On our way we had a striking opportunity of witnessing the pride and

attachment the Turks feel towards their family, however humble it may

be. Some days after leaving Erzeroum we noticed an old man in peasant

costume riding along with us over hill and dale through the snow. He

wore pointed slippers and looked like some fierce Saracen chief of old.

When we halted for the night, Sirry Bey asked us if we would come over

into his shed. He wished us to make the acquaintance of his uncle, who

was the old peasant referred to, and who had ridden quite alone from his

homestead, many miles away, to meet our party. It was a touching sight

to see the pride with which Sirry Bey introduced us to his kinsman. He

himself boasted the title of Excellency, and was one of the secretaries

of the Sultan, coming direct from the Palace in Constantinople, with all

the prestige which this fact carries in the eyes of the inhabitants of

the provinces, to whom “Cospoli” (Constantinople) and the Sultan are

only second in importance to Mecca and the Kaaba; and yet he took a back

seat in the presence of the old peasant, his uncle, and thus his senior

in the family. It did one’s heart good to see the pleasure with which he

introduced us to the old man. We were told by our doctor that when Sirry

Bey first met his uncle on the road he embraced him and kissed his hands

in token of deference to his age, and to the higher standing in the

family given him as uncle in comparison with the nephew.

Our journey through Anatolia also brought us an unforgettable instance

of the unselfish fidelity of a Turkish police officer. On starting from

Erzeroum he was deputed by the Vali to look after us day and night, to

devote himself especially to the care of Dr. Hepworth and myself during

our journey from Erzeroum towards Bitlis, as a sacred trust. And

faithfully indeed did he carry out his mission. He never let us out of

his sight: he brought us in the early morning the water heated over the

charcoal fire of the mangal to make our cocoa, helped us on to the

horses’ backs on starting, forded the river in front of us to make sure

we should have a safe crossing, rode by our side until we arrived at our

destination, and often lay down beside us at night. One evening we were

told that he was due to return to Erzeroum next morning. We called him

into the shed in which Dr. Hepworth and myself were to pass the night.

In addition to handing him a letter for Reouf Pasha thanking him for the

excellent service his officer had rendered us, we offered him a little

purse filled with Turkish gold. It was a poignant spectacle to see this

poor fellow, whose miserable pay was probably months in arrear,

positively refuse to accept anything from us but the letter in which we

had borne testimony to his fidelity. There was mental distress in his

manner and in the tone of his voice: he, who had probably never in his

life handled as much gold as that we offered him, pleading that he could

not accept it. “No, no,” he cried out; “you have given me the letter

saying you are satisfied that I have done my duty.” Though Dr. Hepworth

was case-hardened by thirty years of American journalism, I saw tears

glisten in his eyes.

One day a Turkish colonel rode over from Bayazid, the furthest eastern

Turkish frontier station, situated at the foot of the Ala Dagh (10,000

feet high), where he was in command, to bid us welcome to those distant

parts. No small feat of horsemanship was this journey for him—over a

pathless mountain range through the snow, into which his horse sank at

times up to the belly. He was a splendid example of the strong,

pure-bred Turanian Turk, equal to any amount of fatigue and exposure.

For though we were in the midst of winter, and the distance he had come

could have been scarcely less than a two days’ ride on horseback, he

wore no mantle over his uniform, which barely covered his chest from the

piercing blast. He was, besides, what would justly be termed a “jolly

good fellow.” His saddle trappings, pistol holsters, dagger, and belt

were of silver, beautifully inlaid with black and gold—the finest

specimens of so-called Circassian, but in reality Armenian, workmanship

that I had ever seen, even in the bazaar of Constantinople. Responding

to our expressions of admiration, he pressed us to accept the belt and

dagger as souvenirs. This we declined to do, as we did not see how we

could make him any return. But so determined was he in his generous

intentions that he left the articles on my camp-bed, where I found them

in the evening. But even then I felt I could not accept such a princely

gift from a stranger, and next morning, with Sirry Bey’s assistance, I

prevailed upon him to take them back.

It was on this section of our journey that we passed through several

Circassian villages. The Circassians are a most interesting race,

inasmuch as it has hitherto been impossible to discover their

relationship to any other Asiatic race; their origin is also unknown

beyond the fact that they inhabited the shores of the Black Sea and the

Sea of Azov before the Christian era. Their country was ceded to Russia

in 1829 by the Peace of Adrianople, but the repressive measures they

were subjected to in wars in the Caucasus led to 300,000 out of a total

of 400,000 seeking refuge in Turkey, where they have since lived in

separate communities, some of which we passed through. They are reputed

to be physically the finest race of men and women in these parts,

probably in all Asia. From them are drawn many of the stalwart guards to

be seen in the Imperial palaces at Constantinople and St. Petersburg, as

well as some of the finest women in the harems of the Sultan and the

wealthy pashas. The men we saw certainly bore out their reputation for

fine physique. Many of them were well over six feet in height, with

remarkably fine features, well-shaped hands, and the smallest feet I

have ever seen with such stature. They were dressed in the well-known

Circassian costume, with rows of cartridges on either breast and long

daggers peeping out of their girdles. They received us with stately

hospitality, but are in general credited with being crafty and

treacherous.

What with the desolate nature of the country, hardly a soul being met on

the road in a whole day’s journey, and the wretched character of our

nightly accommodation, this section of our journey included our roughest

experiences. The wildness of the conditions was brought home to us in an

unpleasant manner by the fierceness of the huge dogs in the villages.

They had to be kept at bay with drawn swords by our escort.

We were now well into the mountain fastnesses of Kurdistan—a fact

revealed to us by the ever-increasing escort of Kurdish horsemen that

joined our cavalcade: a motley gathering of fierce-looking men armed to

the teeth, dressed in their national costume, the head covered with a

black hood which gave them a peculiarly demoniac appearance. They bade

us a kindly welcome to their villages and underground dwellings.

Before we left Constantinople, my friend Ahmed Midhat Effendi had given

me a letter written in Turkish characters which he said would ensure us

a kindly welcome in every part of the Sultan’s dominions. So indeed it

turned out to be on different occasions, notably one evening when we

halted in a Kurdish village and passed the night in the underground

dwelling of a chieftain. We squatted down on the floor in a circle, when

Colonel Rushti Bey brought out Midhat Effendi’s letter, the careful

calligraphy of which called forth the admiration of those present, and

read its contents out aloud. Therein was set forth how the proprietor of

one of the greatest journals in the world, moved by a noble impulse to

see that justice was done to the Osmanli, had sent “two fearless,

impartial, and, above all, learned men of letters to see things as they

were with their own eyes, and to report thereon to the outer world.” It

was quite an impressive spectacle to see these men of supposed lawless

proclivities listening devoutly to the description of our mission

therein set forth, to champion the truth against the slander of the

“Frank,” ignorant of the justice of the Turkish cause. As each sentence

was read out in a clear, sympathetic voice, the interest of the audience

grew visibly, until at the close, as with one voice, those present

ejaculated in unison, “May Allah bless and protect them!” It was an

impressive scene in its simplicity and evident sincerity.

Early the next morning, when we departed, our hosts declined to take any

payment for their hospitality; on the other hand, they pressed us to

accept presents from them—daggers and belts richly inlaid with silver

and gold ornamentation, even a horse each to Dr. Hepworth and myself.

All these we declined, but I could not refuse the skin of a bear which

the chief himself had killed with his dagger in a regular “hand to paw”

encounter, as we were assured. It served as a rug in my study for years

afterwards. Even when we left, the kindliness of our hosts was not

exhausted, for a number of Kurds accompanied us for a long distance on

horseback—an attention which was extended to us right through that part

of the country wherever we stopped. This escort grew sometimes to such

dimensions that on occasions we were accompanied by several hundred

horsemen, most of whom belonged to the irregular force of cavalry known

by the name of Hamidiè, already referred to. They rode ahead of us,

galloped in circles round us, shouting lustily and firing off their

rifles and otherwise demonstrating the festive frame of mind into which

the visit of the Padishah’s representatives among his unruly vassals had

plunged them. The further we penetrated into the country the more

numerous became the native escort which joined and followed us from

station to station amid lively demonstrations of good feeling.

One morning, on emerging from the underground mud hut in which we had

passed the night as guests of a Kurdish chief, we caught a glimpse of

Mount Ararat, towering 17,000 feet out of the clouds in front of us.

According to our map this marked the most easterly point of our

itinerary, and Mount Ararat can scarcely have been less than forty miles

away from us. Our own elevation must have been about 6000 to 7000 feet

above the level of the sea; this circumstance, together with the

clearness of the atmosphere, enabled us to make out the outline of the

giant mountain quite distinctly a long way down to its base. For, unlike

all the other mountains we saw on our journey, Mount Ararat stands by

itself, rising in the form of a single cone from the plain.

In the further course of our journey, not far from Bitlis we caught a

glimpse of Lake Van to our left. Indeed, we almost skirted its shores,

though it lay beneath us covered with ice and snow. The lake is situated

about 5000 feet above sea-level: thus our own altitude must have been

considerably more.

Bitlis is on the caravan road from Erzeroum to Mosul, about ten miles to

the south-west of Lake Van on about the same level, namely, 5000 feet,

on the banks of the Tigris, with about 39,000 inhabitants. We stayed at

the konak of the Governor in the centre of the town, on an elevation

which was formerly a fortress, at the foot of which the usual Oriental

bazaar stretches through several narrow streets. Bitlis has belonged to

the Turks since 1514, when it was occupied by Sultan Selim I. Here we

were once more in touch with civilization by means of the post office

and a telegraph station, and spent a few days interviewing different

people—an English Vice-Consul, some missionaries and Armenians—and

choosing horses for the continuation of our journey on horseback to

Diarbekir, which took several days and passed without incident.

Diarbekir lies on the Tigris, which is spanned by an old stone bridge,

across which we rode, the river itself being navigable only for rafts.

Situated nearly 2000 feet above sea-level, the ancient fortress of

Diarbekir has an interesting history. At one time a Roman colony, it

became the see of a Christian bishop in A.D. 325. Enlarged by the

Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, it was conquered and

devastated by Timur in 1373 and fell under Turkish sway in the year

1513, when, like Bitlis, it was taken by Sultan Selim I. To-day

Diarbekir is much diminished in size and importance, but still possesses

about 34,000 inhabitants, twenty mosques, an Armenian school, and a

bazaar, in which, however, there was nothing of interest to be seen.

There were only three European residents when we came to Diarbekir: an

old Franciscan monk, a French Vice-Consul, and an English Consul, Mr.

Alexander Waugh, now British Consul in Constantinople. This gentleman

bade us a warm welcome, and his hospitality, notably the meals we

partook of at his house, one of which was our Christmas dinner, formed

the one bright recollection in the dreary record of our stay. The

versions given us by Turks and Armenians of what had occurred in

connexion with the Armenian disturbances differed little from those we

had already heard elsewhere: that the troubles were brought about in the

first instance by revolutionary activity, that the authorities had lost

their heads, and that finally the population had got out of hand and had

joined in an indiscriminate massacre of Armenians, innocent and guilty.

Our further journey from Diarbekir was also devoid of any incident, and

on the evening of December 31 we rode into the picturesque old town of

Biredschik, and were quartered in a fairly comfortable konak.

Biredschik is situated about 600 feet above sea-level, on the left bank

of the Euphrates, which is navigable here for boats of considerable

size. It is surrounded by a fairly preserved wall, protected by a castle

built on rocks. Biredschik is the most renowned of the places, known to

both the Romans and the Seleucides, which were used for crossing the

Euphrates, a purpose for which Biredschik has been much in use down to

the present day. It numbers several thousand Armenians among its

inhabitants. Here we saw the New Year in, and started next morning for

Aintab, crossing the Euphrates, which is here very broad, with our

saddle-horses, in large shallow-bottomed pontoon-boats. The country

offered a marked contrast to that which we had hitherto traversed. For

whereas we had not seen a tree for weeks together, or a road of any kind

for an even longer period, here we suddenly found ourselves among groves

of olive-trees and fig-trees, besides other indications of a Southern

clime—an agreeable change from the treeless wilderness we had passed

through ever since we left Erzeroum.

Not far from Biredschik we rode past Nisib, a village noteworthy through

the battle of that name (June 24, 1839), in which the Turks under Hafis

Pasha were signally defeated by the Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha. The

renowned Moltke, then a plain Prussian captain, was a looker-on with the

Turks on this occasion, and it is said that they owed their defeat to

having neglected his advice in the disposition of the troops in that

battle.

Our road now took us through a flat country, and our spirits rose under

the improved conditions. At mid-day we used to make a halt, tie up the

horses, light a fire, and take an improvised lunch in the open. One day

we rested beside a stream on the opposite bank of which one of the

soldiers had placed a winebottle as a target. The Sultan had presented

us each with a revolver on starting, and our Turkish escort were firing

away with them at random, without, however, “driving the centre.” Dr.

Hepworth and I stood aside, looking on somewhat amused, which made the

situation rather awkward when Sirry Bey suggested we should join in and

have a shot. This, however, we hesitated to do, for the good reason that

we had previously tested our revolvers on board ship and found that we

could not hit a haystack with them. Finally, Dr. Hepworth also urged me

to try my luck; so, not wishing to appear churlish, I took a haphazard

aim, and, to my intense surprise, down came the bottle. The others were

much impressed, and begged me to repeat the exploit. This, however, I

firmly declined to do, preferring to leave them under the impression of

my dexterity. Few things struck me more forcibly on that journey than

the lack of practice with firearms right through this supposed warlike

population. We never came across a single rifle-range on the whole of

our journey, and on one occasion when we attended an improvised shooting

competition among the Kurds their marksmanship was of a very inferior

order, and the behaviour of the competitors so excited that I gained the

impression they might resent anybody excelling them at their sport.

We had met few horsemen since we left the land of the Kurds; but after

Biredschik they again appeared on the scene. Now, however, they were

Syrians, men in white flowing garments—bournous—resembling the Arab

costumes familiar through Schreyer’s pictures of Algerian life, wielding

spears of twelve to fifteen feet in length. They gave us an equally warm

reception, and, like the Kurds, accompanied us for hours on our way.

The rest of our journey to Aintab was now plane-sailing. The road was

tolerable and the traffic such as gave evidence of some degree of

commercial activity. We counted over 1200 camels laden with merchandise

which we passed in one day.

Aintab is a town of some 20,000 inhabitants, and they are made up of

Greek and Armenian Christians and Kurdish Mohammedans in about equal

numbers. It is the capital of the Syrian vilayet, and is situated on the

River Sadjur, a tributary of the Euphrates. Like Biredschik, Aintab

includes an old mountain fortress, which was already known at the time

of the Crusades—when it was taken by Saladin, and again in the year 1400

by Timur the Tartar. To-day it is the seat of wool and cotton

manufactures, a commercial depot of leather, cloth, honey, and tobacco.

At Aintab we changed our mode of travelling for the last time; for we

disposed of our saddle-horses and proceeded to the coast in the same

type of tumble-down conveyance as that in which we left Trebizond. Dr.

Hepworth was very sorry to part with his sure-footed little grey mount,

which had carried him from Bitlis without a single mishap or stumble.

Altogether our experience of the Anatolian horse was one to be

remembered with gratitude: never seeming to tire, tractable, docile, and

sure-footed as a goat, this breed of horse, which is to be found

throughout the Turkish Empire, is truly a friend of man. It is the only

horse I have ever known which stands at the bidding of its master for

hours together without being tied up. Also, I never once saw a horse

treated unkindly during the whole of our journey.

The monotony of riding day by day on horseback at a snail’s pace for

weeks in silence, from early dawn till sunset, over an endless

succession of undulating roadless hills and vales, with occasional

spells of dreadful jolting in springless carts and carriages, had told

on our spirits. Thus we all had good cause to rejoice over our arrival

at Alexandretta. The sight of the sea once more, as from a high ridge of

hills we first beheld the blue waters of the Mediterranean, after

passing nearly two months in a wild, almost treeless and pathless

country, was a thrilling sensation. Cut off from all the comforts of

civilization, which lifelong usage causes us to take as a matter of

course, their true value came home to us. Dr. Hepworth involuntarily

recalled the famous episode in Xenophon’s “Retreat of the Ten Thousand”

where the Greeks at last greeted the sea—in their case, the Black

Sea—with the cry: “Thalassa! Thalassa!”

Here, for the first time since leaving Trebizond, we beheld an inn. We

were shown into a bedroom and were delighted to see what we had gone

without for so long, and thus learned to appreciate as a luxury—a bed, a

water-jug, a washing-basin, a table, and a chair.

Founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandretta is picturesquely situated,

but otherwise a poor place, bearing all the signs of Oriental neglect;

even the harbour, at which various steamers call, looked deserted and

dilapidated. The town itself is surrounded on the land side by swamps,

to the fever-breeding character of which the many white gravestones in

the large cemetery seemed to offer eloquent testimony, inasmuch as the

place has only about 1500 inhabitants. Thus the European colony gives it

a wide berth, for its members reside ten miles away in the pleasantly

situated town of Beilan. The vegetation, however, is very rich, almost

tropical in character: beautiful palms and giant cactus plants flourish

in abundance.

In summarizing the incidents of our journey, which had now come to an

end, our Hungarian doctor turned to Dr. Hepworth and myself and said:

“_Now_ that we are well out of it I think we can congratulate each other

all round. For I do not mind telling you that there was hardly a day, or

rather a night, on this terrible journey in which we were not exposed to

the risk of catching smallpox or typhus.” At Erzeroum several of us had

been vaccinated, by the advice of the British Consul, though it was only

with the greatest difficulty that lymph above suspicion was procured in

the town.

Another, and by no means a trifling, danger which we luckily escaped was

one which had been foretold us in Constantinople as the most serious

possibility of our journey, namely, snowstorms and heavy rains producing

floods. Had we encountered either of them in an awkward place it might

have delayed us for days, even for weeks, in a country without roads or

bridges. Fortunately, we met with neither the one nor the other. During

the whole eight weeks we were on the road it never rained, and only

snowed now and then for short periods.

Shortly after leaving Erzeroum our leader, Sirry Bey, was taken

seriously ill with an internal inflammation, which only yielded to the

application of ice. On this account we were obliged to remain several

days in a village on the road to Bitlis until he got better. But even

then he had to be borne between two poles fastened to two horses. But

for our Hungarian doctor he would probably have succumbed.

We were obliged to leave our Roumanian interpreter behind us in a

hospital at Alexandretta, as he had contracted erysipelas in a Turkish

bath at Erzeroum. This complaint developed into an infectious disease of

a tuberculous character termed sycosis, which necessitated shaving off

all the hair on his body. Thus afflicted he had accompanied us all the

way, and we often had to put up with his sleeping on the ground close to

us.

After staying a couple of days in Alexandretta and partaking of the

hospitality of the United States Vice-Consul we embarked on board a

steamer bound for Constantinople. During the uneventful voyage we had

ample leisure to review the impressions gained on our expedition, some

of which, though they are not free from sundry repetitions, I have

jotted down in the following chapter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER VII

SUMMARY OF OUR JOURNEY

Truth is established by investigation and delay;

falsehood prospers by precipitancy.

TACITUS

MARK TWAIN in one of his entertaining books tells us that his travelling

party was dirty at Constantinople, dirtier at Damascus, but dirtiest at

Jerusalem.

Our party had already obtained the Jerusalemic stage of uncleanliness,

and consequent ungodliness, a few days after leaving Erzeroum. We passed

through close upon eight hundred miles of country sporadically inhabited

by Armenians, still living, however poorly, in the midst of Circassians,

Kurds, Arabs, Turcomans, and Turks. We saw them “alive” in their

villages. We met them travelling alone along the high road without any

escort or arms, the women now and then riding on horseback astride like

men. We conversed with innumerable Armenians, priests and bishops of

whole districts among the rest, and were assured by them that in such

and such a district no outrages, no violence, no molestation whatsoever,

even though revolutionists were about, had taken place. Lastly, our

Armenian cook rode for hundreds of miles ahead of us quite alone,

unarmed, and never encountered the slightest enmity, even far less than

he might if he alighted as a stranger on horseback among the miners in

some Christian community. And yet these Armenian agitators do not

hesitate to assert that the Moslem Turk is bent on the extermination of

their race. An even more untenable statement is that the Armenians are a

“nation,” and as such are entitled to autonomy. The Armenians are not a

nation, but an Asiatic race among many other races forming remnants of

independent states in olden times. If half, or perhaps three-quarters of

a million of Asiatic Armenians, now sporadically distributed over an

area half the size of Europe, form a _nation_, what are we to say of the

five million Russian Jews cooped up within the pale assigned to them by

the Russian Government? Why does not Europe take up their case? What

answer would Europe get from Holy Russia if she did so? But this does

not exhaust the question. The ethical sentiment of Europe, rightly or

wrongly, but in every case armed with enormous power, steps in and says:

“Even if these facts are admitted, they do not excuse, much less

justify, Turkey in using the means she adopted to crush a rebellion in

our enlightened Christian age.” Here the Armenians undoubtedly have a

very real grievance, which Turkey must see to at once unless her rule is

to pass from her in Asia as well as in Europe. But the task will not be

an easy one. We need only put ourselves in her place in order to realize

its difficulties.

Here is a vast Mohammedan country, the Sovereign of which is

acknowledged by international law to be the Sultan of Turkey. This

country belonged to the Turks even before the discovery of America.

To-day it is honeycombed with Christian, mostly Protestant, missionary

schools, the avowed object of which is to educate a small Christian

minority—be it admitted the most thrifty, shrewd, pushing, and

intriguing of all Eastern races—in the Christian religion and at the

same time in modern European ideas, and to bid them look to the Western

world outside Turkey as their natural protector. This was bound to make

these Asiatics discontented with their Asiatic status. It is denied that

proselytism in any form was attempted or intended. I was informed by an

American missionary at Bitlis, who had lived thirty years in Turkey,

that formerly there was only one small Protestant Armenian sect in the

whole of Armenia, and this was in the little town of Hunuesch, between

Erzeroum and Bitlis. Yet statistics show that the pupils of the 621

Protestant schools distributed throughout Asiatic Turkey in 1896

numbered 27,000. Thus, whether proselytism has been intended or

attempted, or not, it has, _de facto_, taken place on a large scale, for

the existence of 27,000 Protestants, school pupils constantly renewed

with each succeeding generation, out of a total Armenian population of

half to three-quarters of a million (say a million if you will),[9]

represents a preponderant percentage of Protestants among them. These

are not views, but facts, which can be easily verified, and with regard

to which the reader may draw his own conclusions.

Footnote 9:

According to Cuinet, the number of Armenians in the Turkish Empire

some years ago was 1,144,000, of which about two-thirds would fall to

Asiatic Turkey proper; whereas in Russian Transcaucasia there were

said to be nearly 1,000,000 Armenians, and about 100,000 in Persia.

The Armenians are thus scarcely more numerous in Asiatic Turkey than

the Italians and Belgians in France, distributed over a country twice

the size of France.

I met missionaries everywhere in Turkey. I was in their houses as far

west as Macedonia, and as far east as Bitlis, near Lake Van, on the

frontier of Persia. They nearly all evinced a marked anxiety not to be

held responsible, however remotely or indirectly, for the revolutionary

movement in Turkey, which in its turn was the source of the massacres

that took place, and I willingly believe that they never really intended

to provoke disturbance or encourage rebellion against the Turkish

authorities. Still there cannot be any doubt that their teaching—not

their doctrines, perhaps—had the result, probably never intended, and

one it has taken a couple of generations to attain, of fostering the

Armenian revolutionary movement throughout Asiatic Turkey. Everything

had been carefully prepared in Asia and in the Press of Europe and

America before the Armenian outbreak to boom a second Bulgaria. The

project failed because, as compared with the years 1876–77, Liberalism

as an aggressively agitating force happened to be under an eclipse in

Europe in 1895–96. Asiatic Turkey is honeycombed with European and

United States Consuls. These gentlemen occupy a quasi-diplomatic status,

although in some places there are next to no national interests to be

protected.[10] Their dragomans and servants are mostly Armenians. When

these Consuls walk abroad, accompanied by their armed bodyguard, it is

as superior beings, as petty Ambassadors. They are entitled to address

the Turkish Governor-Generals with almost Ambassadorial authority. They

report the outcome of their investigations to their Ambassador at

Constantinople, who thereupon proceeds to examine and cross-examine the

Turkish Government at the Sublime Porte on the basis of the Consul’s

communications. This activity was at work long before the outbreak of

the Armenian massacres, and yet there are still people who are surprised

if the Turks do not seem to love the Christians. Imagine the great towns

in England, or the United States, or France, or Germany favoured by the

presence of Moslem Consuls walking abroad like Ambassadors, with

extra-territorial immunities, present in every law court, and reporting

every petty larceny that takes place to their Ambassador! What would be

the feelings in the above Christian countries towards these Moslem

Consuls?

Footnote 10:

American interests in Anatolia are mainly those of the missionary

establishments, schools, hospitals, workshops, etc.

The English Vice-Consul at Bitlis read us some extracts from his latest

report to Constantinople. They consisted of a number of incidents of

petty wrongs regarding internal administration in Turkey—arbitrary

enforcement of local dues, petty larceny among Turks or what not—matters

mostly reported to him by his Armenian dragoman.

“But are not these purely internal local concerns?” I queried.

“Yes, to be sure,” was the reply.

“Well,” I rejoined, “if you are hereafter appointed to a Consular post

in Russia, and you make similar reports to the British Ambassador at St.

Petersburg, and the Russians find it out, don’t you think you would run

a fair chance of the Russians making your official position rather

uncomfortable for you?”

“I fancy I should,” was his jocular reply.

Incidents such as this show the vexations which the Turks have had to

put up with in their own country at the hands of the Christians. Some

time ago an English Consular official in Persia wrote an article on

Persian administration in an English magazine, with the result that the

Shah of Persia successfully insisted that he should not return to

Teheran.

To these petty vexations must be added the more serious trouble Turkey

has constantly to reckon with in consequence of the peculiar attitude of

the Russian Government in regard to the Armenian revolutionary movement.

We have been witnesses in our time of the vast resources of the Russian

Government when called upon to deal with their own revolutionary

parties. If the Russian Armenians would like to put them to the test

they need only try to force the Russian Government to cease interfering

with their schools, their language, and their creed. They might then

indeed discover for themselves what a Russian millstone is like. But

no!—they submit to Russian tyranny, preferring to organize revolutionary

work at Kars, Tiflis, and Batoum directed against Turkey; and “helpless”

Russian bureaucracy avows its inability to discover, much less to

interfere with such!

The problem to be faced by Turkey is to ensure that security of life and

property in her Asiatic dominions which is a _sine qua non_ with every

Government, be it under the Crescent or the Cross. The Kurds must be

forced to give up their predatory propensities. They still defy the

Valis, and are, I was credibly assured, now and then secretly encouraged

in this by the military commanders, who intrigue against the civil

authorities, and it is difficult for the Government in Constantinople to

ascertain the true facts of the case. Shortly after our journey the

Modiki Kurds slew the kaimakan of Modiki and along with him eight

Turkish officers. They were still unpunished a year afterwards.[11] And

yet if such men cannot be brought to respect the law, and security for

life and property be assured, it will shortly be said of Asiatic Turkey

as it was of ancient Carthage: “Delenda est Carthago.” The Kurd, like

Zola’s hero in “La Débâcle,” must take to the plough and work. It is the

law of the Universe; not even a Khalif can exonerate his subjects from

its inexorable working. Turkey is in need of reforms—nor is she the only

country in need of them. This is admitted on all hands. And among these

none are so vitally necessary as those of an economic nature. It is a

misfortune for Turkey to-day that Mohammed lived practically in a

desert, where trees and roads were few and far between. If this great

reformer had lived, for instance, in Anatolia or Mesopotamia, one of his

earnest injunctions to his followers would doubtless have been that

every one of the Faithful should consider it to be his duty to plant a

tree and assist in making public roads, the latter being the occupation

which Goethe tells us finally brought contentment to the restless soul

of Faust. The Mohammedans, who after twelve hundred years still

religiously obey every injunction of their Prophet, down to the number

of prayers and ablutions to be said and practised per diem, would have

naturally carried out his wishes in this particular. And, if so, Asiatic

Turkey would wear a very different aspect from what it does to-day.

Alas! those who have travelled through Turkey in Asia and witnessed the

absolute lack of roads, bridges, and almost every other civilized

convenience which marks a certain mean level of social organization, can

only come to the conclusion that the Turk is more or less of a nomad: a

nomad horseman, as he was a thousand years ago, leading the life of a

nomad, even though his predatory instincts are now and then dormant,

and, when exercised, are impartially put into practice at the expense of

both the Mohammedan and the Christian.

Footnote 11:

At the moment of preparing these pages for the press, sixteen years

after my journey through Asiatic Turkey, I learn from several

independent sources that although no recrudescence of the massacres

has taken place, the conditions prevailing there to-day are even more

unsatisfactory than of yore. The Imperial authority under the régime

of the Young Turks is at a lower ebb even than in Abdul Hamid’s time.

In addition thereto must be reckoned the dreadful losses in human life

caused by the wars in Tripoli and the Balkans, so that the fields are

now largely tilled by women and old men.

The American mind is said to be able to find the shortest and

straightest road from one given point—logical or material—to another.

The Englishman may possibly come next to the American in this; the

German is slower, but he is infallible in the long run, for he works a

problem out stolidly with the assistance of logarithms and trigonometry.

As you near the East, the capacity for discovering the short, straight,

logical line decreases—the Austro-Hungarian finds it sometimes, the Turk

hardly ever.

This constitutional inability to seize the value of an established fact

or series of facts, and to draw the obvious logical conclusion

therefrom, has all along hampered the Turk in putting his case before

the world, even in instances where seven out of ten points were in his

favour. I have heard an educated Turk cite the case of an Armenian

tailor who had deserted his wife and run away with another woman as a

proof of the iniquity of that interesting race. In his lack of logic the

Turk recalls the Swiss woman who appealed to the court for a divorce

from her husband. On being asked what grounds she could advance in

support, she replied after thinking awhile: “He is not the father of my

last child.”

Individual Americans, Englishmen, Germans—yes, even English

missionaries—will now and then make out a better case for Turkey than

all the Turks put together with whom I conversed during my several

prolonged visits to Turkey.

“Yes, you must remember this question has two sides. There is a deal to

be said for the Turks; the Armenians are not all angels,” an American

missionary said to me in Anatolia. “For, let there be no mistake about

it, it is only the Pharisee who bids us fancy that the priests of Baal

have erected altars exclusively among the Turks.”

I contend that the responsibility for the horrors which took place in

Asia Minor rested in the first instance with the Armenian revolutionists

who instigated them, and not with the Turks, who are an Asiatic people

like the Russians and the Persians, and whose methods of repression are

not very different from theirs. The Armenian revolutionists were

responsible for the suffering of the innocent for the guilty. I have

read their pamphlets, their stirring circulars urging the helpless

Armenian hamal (porter), peasant, and artisan to rise and throw off the

Turkish yoke. These documents were only too often ruthless and

indefensible in their unbridled lawlessness. The Armenian revolutionists

stated that it was impossible to hope for anything but persecution _on

religious grounds_ from the Turk. Now the Armenian language, creed, and

schools are perfectly free in Turkey, whereas they have always been

persistently interfered with in Russia. The Armenians accuse the Turk of

persecuting Christians, whereas the high road from Trebizond to

Erzeroum, as already stated, is dotted with Christian monasteries and

churches unmolested during centuries.

Our steamer stopped at Mersina, Rhodes, and Smyrna on our way, but we

landed only at the last-named place. In strolling through the city, we

took our farewell of Asiatic life with its caravans and its camels—a

long line of which met us in the street. Our arrival at Constantinople

took place after sunset, and in observance of some queer harbour

regulations we were obliged to pass the night on board, being allowed to

disembark only in the morning.

Before leaving for Paris we stayed a few days at Constantinople. The

Sultan sent word asking me to draw up a report of the impressions gained

on our journey. This I did, and expressed myself to the effect that what

had made the deepest impression on us was the lack of roads, bridges,

and trees, and the desolate nature of the whole country, some parts

being little better than a wilderness. There would seem to be a great

field for beneficent work in these lands.

Thereupon the Sultan expressed a wish that Dr. Hepworth and myself

should come up to the Palace and be received by him. After duly

considering the matter, we replied jointly that, as His Majesty had

asked us to render a service to truth and justice by our investigations

in his Asiatic dominions, we thought it best to leave Constantinople

without seeing him; for, if we were received in audience, it would get

known and might be construed into our having only acted as his agents—a

surmise which would certainly discount the value of Dr. Hepworth’s

impartial account of our experiences. The Sultan seemed to recognize the

force of our contention, for he sent us a kindly message embodying his

best wishes for our journey, and expressing the hope that we might some

day come again to Constantinople. In order once for all to dispose of

the idle rumours which were current at the time, I may add that neither

Dr. Hepworth nor myself accepted any memento or present whatsoever from

the Sultan. A decoration which His Majesty subsequently sent to Paris

for Mrs. Hepworth was returned through the proprietor of the _New York

Herald_.

Before leaving I received the following letter from Munir Pasha:

PALAIS IMPÉRIAL DE YILDIZ, CABINET DU GRAND MAÎTRE DES

CÉRÉMONIES.

“CHER MONSIEUR WHITMAN,

“Je vous envoie par le porteur une lettre que j’ai écrite à

l’adresse de Monsieur Gordon Bennett, et qui est relative à

votre récent voyage en Anatolie.

“En vous priant de vouloir bien faire parvenir cette missive à

sa destination, je me plais à vous dire combien je me félicite

des relations personnelles que j’ai eu l’honneur d’avoir avec

vous, et à vous assurer du bon souvenir que je garderai de ces

relations.

“Votre dévoué,

“MUNIR.”

LUNDI, _12 Janvier 1898_.

Most of us can recall the peculiar sensation we experience on returning

into the fresh air from the fetid atmosphere of an ill-ventilated

apartment, the noxious nature of which we had scarcely realized as long

as we remained there. So also the true character of Eastern conditions

only seemed to come home to us after we had left the country. At least,

speaking for my travelling companion and myself, we only seemed to

realize the treeless desolation, the wilderness of roadless Kurdistan,

as we were passing through that beautiful, richly verdured section of

Austria and South Germany traversed by the Orient Express. Then it was

that the contrast enabled us to appreciate as perhaps never before the

benefits of the high state of European land culture. The same feeling

might well suggest itself to the traveller in passing from Dover to

London through Kent, the Garden of England. On arrival in London,

however, other features of Eastern life forced themselves on our memory

and suggested comparisons less flattering to our own social conditions.

Needless to say they were those which account for the strange

fascination the East exercises even upon some of the most cultured

European travellers.

Indeed, it was a strange, for the moment an almost unaccountable, sight

to behold the crowds of people flocking into the City of a morning from

the suburbs. This haste, this eagerness, as if their very life depended

upon catching a train, constantly struck one as unnatural after living

for weeks along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, staying in

villages in which the conditions were so primitive—a contrast almost

beyond comprehension. What could be the driving motive that impelled

these people to this feverish activity, this restlessness? Why, hunger,

to be sure, the grim necessities of the battle of life, a struggle to be

continued without intermission from youth to the grave, and, when done,

leaving little to take note of except, perhaps, that a mutton chop more

or less would be called for at their particular luncheon haunt. And the

background: Tooting Bec, Clapham, and Brixton in the South, Pentonville

and Hackney in the North, and the East End with its miles of slums and

its paupers; or to take those parts more familiar to middle-class life,

Marylebone and Bloomsbury, with their interminable, dull, featureless

roads and terraces, the rows of houses in their dread monotony,

veritable soul-killing mausoleums of the living: what Buskin termed

“streets in hell.” To think of their commonplace residents with their

fads and fancies and their sympathies rigorously narrowed down in

accordance with the tenets of their faith. All are supposed to worship

the selfsame God, and yet they are socially divided, cut off from each

other as nowhere people are in the East. Surely life should have some

wider and nobler scope, aim, and application than the mere gratification

of the appetite to live, were it only to cultivate that restful spirit

without which any earnest self-communion, any deeper philosophy of life

is an impossibility. At least so it seemed to strike one fresh from two

months’ intimate communion with Nature—from conditions varying little, I

should say, since Abraham’s time—a patriarchal state of things which

acknowledges a chief, but gives brotherhood, if not equality, to the

rest of the community. I had seen men in Syrian villages—the mayor, for

instance, a stalwart, full-bearded peasant patriarch of dignified

bearing and benevolent mien, in profile not unlike the stone images of

the Assyrian kings in the British Museum—slowly rolling cigarettes with

refined, beautifully shaped hands. Somehow it was a dignified memory, in

spite of the backwardness of the country, lacking in all our scientific

and sanitary improvements. I had not come across a single man with grimy

hands, and, except in one Armenian village near Bitlis, I had not seen a

woman or child in such rags as I often see in London. Much less had I

heard of cases of starvation, nor was I told of forlorn, painted harlots

or drunken women—surely items worth recording on the credit side against

much that is to be deplored and commiserated with.

Some months after my return to London I received the following letter

from the companion of my Armenian hardships:

NEW YORK,

_April 22, 1898_.

“MY DEAR WHITMAN,

“I was glad to see your familiar handwriting again, and almost

thought I could hear your voice.

“Yes, my dear fellow, those were troublous, but still good,

times; and now that I have largely forgotten the hardships, I

should like to do something of the same kind again. I did get

the letters you sent, and thanked you for sending them. Did my

letter miscarry? I fear so, as you did not acknowledge the

receipt or answer my questions. Did you say your article was in

the April number of _Harper’s_? I have sent for it, and am sure

that I shall have great pleasure in reading it.

“I worked hard at my book[12] while in Paris, then went to

Marseilles, to Nice and Mentone. The book is now nearly

finished. It will cover about three hundred pages, possibly

more, and will be published in September. I shall take pride in

sending you a copy.

“My health is good. I am still a bit nervous, but that is

because I have not yet rested as I ought to have done. The

summer I guess will see me right again. You do not tell me about

yourself. What are you doing? Where have you gone, or do you

expect to go to Berlin[13] as we thought? Moreover, do you

expect to write a book? This is important, for it is sure to be

a good one. You can do it, and you ought to.

“Please give my regards to your good wife, and believe me,

“Always yours,

“GEORGE H. HEPWORTH.”

Footnote 12:

“Through Armenia on Horseback,” by the Rev. George H. Hepworth. New

York and London, 1898.

Footnote 13:

Reference to an offer made me by the proprietor of the _New York

Herald_ to go to Berlin as its permanent correspondent, which I

declined.

Nearly seven years elapsed before circumstances took me back for a short

visit to Constantinople. This time I went no longer as the

representative of a great newspaper, but only as a private individual.

All the greater was the surprise I felt on my arrival to find a warm

welcome from the friends I had previously made there. From the Sultan

and his entourage down to the kafedji, who used to hand me my cup of

coffee in the Palace, and the swarthy arabadji, whose black stallions

took me on my daily round of visits, they all seemed to bear one in

kindly memory in gratitude for what they deemed were services rendered

to their country, and this too, after a lapse of seven long years, in

the Mohammedan East! This has often struck me as extraordinary in an age

in which a lifetime of beneficent work, even when recognized at all, is

forgotten in a week.

In the remaining chapters I have striven to reconstruct under different

headings the impressions and experiences gained during my various visits

to Turkey.

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PART II

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