The mineral wealth of Armenia is very great; but like the other
potential riches of the Turkish Empire, it profits nobody, not
even the greedy despot whose word is death. Gold, silver, copper,
iron, and minor metals, besides marble and other beautiful stones,
are present in abundance. About three miles from Marsovan, where
I preached, is a mountain called Tarshan Dagh (rabbit mountain),
rich in gold; another called Goomish Dagh, about eight miles west,
is laden with silver; and they are likely to remain so, for no one
will rifle them of their treasures while Turkey endures. The Sultan,
it is true, sends an officer from Constantinople under large salary,
to take out the precious metals, but that person does very little
work. He lives like a lord, lets things go as they will, bribes the
palace officials, and all the gold and silver extracted does not
pay his wages. The Sultan will not permit Christians to work mines,
and if they did, he would rob them of the proceeds. Everywhere the
condition is the same. Though Armenia is the oldest inhabited country,
she is, in utilization, the newest; much newer than the United States,
for indeed she does not exist yet. She is a virgin land, her mines
not open, her soil not half tilled. The Turks and the Kurds are lazy
and stagnant; they will do nothing, and they will not permit the
industrious Armenian Christians to do anything of importance.
The country has all the old fertility which made Asia Minor under
the Byzantine Empire the garden of the world, till the Turks half
turned it into a desert, as they do every spot accursed by their
presence. The grain, the fruit, the vegetables are hardly, if at all,
to be equaled. The watermelons raised on the banks of the Euphrates
and the Tigris are the largest and sweetest of their kind; two
melons are sometimes a camel's load. It is impossible for a family
to use the whole of such a melon, which has to be cut up and sold in
pieces. The grapes, either fresh or in the shape of wine or raisins,
are of the first rank. Many varieties when cured and dried as raisins
exceed in size the plumpest grapes of other lands. Nearly everything
is raised or grows wild in Armenia which is to be had in the Northern
or Southern States of America, though of course each country has some
things peculiar to itself. The products of the North are paralleled by
those of the rugged picturesque highlands of North Turkish and Russian
Armenia, with their cold, snowy winters, short, hot summers, and mild
intervening seasons; those of the South find their counterparts from
the rich upland valleys, or the lowland plains needing irrigation,
of Kurdistan and Persian Armenia (Azerbijan), with its semi-tropical
climate, and alternations of wet and dry seasons. The grain crops
are wheat, Indian corn, barley, and oats. Cotton is one of the main
products; a great deal of tobacco and rice are raised; and sugar is
made in the Persian part. In the fields and gardens you can find not
only the wonderful melons I have just spoken of, but pumpkins and
squashes, lettuce and egg-plant, and indeed most of the vegetables
that come to an American table. As to fruits, all that you know we
know also, only of finer flavors. Asia Minor is the original home
of the quince, the apricot, and the nectarine, and I believe of the
peach too; while our apples, pears, and plums are incomparable. The
Muscat apples of Amassia are exceptional even there. After eating them,
one hardly wonders that Adam and Eve could not resist the temptation
of doing the same, at the cost of innocence and Eden. The pears of
Malatia keep them company; and the quince grows sometimes as large
as a man's head. Another fruit equally important is the mulberry
for silk-worms. The olive and fig are cultivated and also grow wild,
and filberts and walnuts can be gathered anywhere in the woods, as
well as orchards; of course not the American "hickory nuts," but the
"English walnuts" of the groceries.
In spite of the dreadful roads, and the lack of protection for
travelers, the Armenians manage to send a good deal of grown
or manufactured stuff to the ports on the Black and Caspian
seas,--Trebizond, Batoum, Poti, Baku,--silk and cotton, and fabrics
made from them; hides and leather, including lambskins; wine, dried
fruits, raisins, tobacco, drugs, and dyestuffs, wax, and other things.
Methods of cultivation are probably much like what they were in
Abraham's time; there are no very modern machines or even tools. The
plough is not quite the mere scratching-stick of the savages, to
be sure; but it is only a crooked piece of wood with a bit of iron
fastened to the end that touches the ground, drawn by oxen and held
by the farmer. The fields of grain are reaped by the sickle as of
old; it takes as long to cut down one acre so as fifty by a common
mowing machine. The sheaves are carried to a gal or threshing floor
near the house, an open platform, not sheltered from the weather; and
there the grain is separated from the straw by a process so curious
that I doubt if any American, save a missionary to Armenia, has ever
heard of it. It is not treading it out under the feet of the cattle,
as pictured in the Bible, nor beating it out with a flail; both these
methods kept the straw whole. A threshing board is made by fastening
hundreds of sharp flints into a wooden frame; the grain is placed
between this and the threshing floor, the oxen attached to the board,
and the farmer sitting on it drives them round and round in a circle
until the straw is cut fine, and the grain well rubbed and shaken
loose. Then, on the first windy day, he takes the old hand fan or
winnow, and separates the grain from the straw, keeping the latter to
feed the animals in winter; for the long grass of American plateaus,
and the barns of hay from them, are seldom seen in Armenia.
The wheat crops are extraordinary; not only great in yield, but the
grains often double the size of ordinary American wheat, as compared
with specimens from the large and representative fields of Minnesota
and Nebraska.