The Governor calls—A great honour—The Khedive's treasurer—The
Pacha's carriage—The Turks and Christians—The Russian
Government—The Armenian subjects of the Porte—The seeds of
disaffection—General Ignatieff—The treasurer—The Italian
lady—Erzingan—The Governor's invitation—The cold in this
country—The Pacha nearly frozen to death—His march from Kars
to Erzeroum—Deep chasms along the track—The Conference is
over—The Missionaries' home—American hospitality—The ladies—A
Turkish woman in the streets of New York—A Chinese lad—New
Orleans—The Anglo-Indian telegraph—The Franco-German War—The
potato plant—The Armenians more deceitful than the Turks—The
converts to Protestantism—The Tzar's Government does not
tolerate any religion save its own—The superstitions attached
to the Greek faith.
I was thinking of calling upon the Italian lady when Mohammed, running
into my room, informed me that the governor was actually coming in
person to call upon me, and that it was a great honour; for some time
before this the Khedive's treasurer had passed through Sivas, and Issek
Pacha had not deigned to visit him, but had conversed with the Egyptian
from the street.
"See what a great man you are, Effendi!" said the delighted Mohammed.
"The equal of a Pacha too! fortunate is my fate that I have been
assigned to you as a servant!"
The governor drove up to the door in a vehicle which very much
resembled a brewer's dray. It was the only carriage of any sort or kind
in Sivas. This fact alone added considerably to the Pacha's importance
in that town. He was a corpulent man, and required a great deal of
pushing at the hands of his two attendants to make him pass through
the doorway of the carriage; two steps enabled the person inside the
vehicle to descend to the ground.
Issek Pacha, turning with great caution, walked backwards, his two
servants holding his feet and guiding them to the steps below. After
resting a few seconds, to recover from this exertion, the governor
slowly mounted the staircase which led to my apartment.
He now told me that twenty-five years ago the Turks and Christians
got on very well together, but ever since the Crimean war the Russian
Government has been actively engaged in tampering with the Armenian
subjects of the Porte, and has been doing its best to sow the seeds
of disaffection amongst the younger Armenians, by promising to make
them counts and dukes in the event of their rising in arms against the
Porte.
"If it were not for Russian intrigues," continued the Pacha, "we Turks
should be very good friends with the Christians. But Ignatieff is very
clever, he will not let us alone, and does his best to create discord
in our ranks."
I mentioned the case of the Italian lady, and asked him if he could not
do something for her.
"It is a very difficult question," replied the Pacha; "her husband,
the engineer, was a refugee Pole, and had lost his nationality as a
Russian subject. Moreover, his father lives in Russia, and may claim
that the son's property should be administered according to Muscovite
laws. Then there is an infant child; and, besides this, the lady
herself is an Italian, and is expecting another baby. We have written
to Constantinople for instructions, when they arrive we shall know what
proportion of the husband's property is due to the widow."
"What should you advise to be done in the matter?" he inquired.
"My opinion is that you ought to give the lady sufficient money to pay
her expenses so far as Constantinople; for there she can speak to her
own Ambassador, and arrange the business more easily than it can be
done here."
"Not a bad idea," said the Pacha. "I will advance two months of her
husband's salary."
"_Gell!_ come!" he cried to a crowd of servants who were waiting
outside, and whilst one attendant handed him a cigarette, and a second
some coffee, the Pacha desired a third to tell his treasurer that he
wished to speak to him immediately. This official now arrived.
"I want two months' wages from the sum owing to the late engineer to be
brought here at once," said the governor.
"But no order about the distribution of the property has come from
Constantinople," replied the treasurer hesitatingly; "if we pay any
money to the widow, we shall be held responsible for it ourselves."
"No," I said, "I will be responsible for the amount. If the authorities
at Constantinople say that you have done wrong, I will repay you the
money."
"Certainly not," said the Pacha; "the responsibility is mine. My orders
are to be instantly obeyed," he added.
"Is the money to be paid in caime or silver?" asked the treasurer.
"Silver," was the reply. "When the poor woman's husband died, caime
was worth as much as medjidis, but now there is a great difference, she
must not be the loser. Run!" he cried.
"On my head be it!" replied the treasurer. In a few minutes he returned
with a small sack of silver.
"Will you take it to the lady yourself?" said the governor, handing me
the bag. "And when do you leave Sivas?" he added.
"Probably in three days' time."
"Well," continued the governor, "you will pass by Erzingan, where
I have some property, and I hope you will stay in my house. Nay, no
thanks. It will be doing me an honour, and I have written for rooms to
be prepared. I shall send some Zaptiehs with you," he added.
"I do not want any."
"Nay, but you must have some. You will have terrible hard work in
crossing the mountains between this and Divriki. There are already two
or three feet of snow on the track. In some places you will require
men to dig a way before your party. You do not know what the cold is in
this country," he continued. "I was once nearly frozen to death myself,
going from Kars to Erzeroum, just about the time of the Crimean war. I
had 500 soldiers with me; a snow-storm came on, we lost our way. My men
strayed in different directions. I had furs, and was able to resist the
cold, but when we counted up my party the next morning, more than half
the men were frost-bitten, and several had died during the night. There
is another reason why you require several guides," added the governor.
"The path over the mountains is covered with snow, and there are deep
chasms and fissures alongside the track, some of them are more than
a hundred feet deep. The guides carry poles, and will sound the path
before your horses, otherwise you will not have much chance of reaching
Kars."
"The Conference is over," said the Pacha, as he rose from the divan.
"The news has been telegraphed to us from Constantinople."
"What has been the result of it?" I inquired.
"Nothing! What else could you expect? Particularly when Russia, the
cause and origin of all our difficulties, was permitted to have a
representative at the Conference—and such a representative—for General
Ignatieff is a cunning old fox!"
Then shaking hands with me—which I afterwards learned from Mohammed
was a very great honour—the Pacha waddled downstairs, and drove to his
official residence.
Later in the day I rode to the missionaries' home, a pleasant little
house situated in the outskirts of the town. On their arrival in Sivas
they had taken an abode from some Armenians, but the latter demanded
such an exorbitant rent for the house in question that the missionaries
determined to build one for themselves.
My friends' names were Perry, Hubbard, and Riggs. They received me with
that hospitality which an Englishman always receives from Americans, no
matter whether they meet him in the States or elsewhere.
Two of these gentlemen had brought their wives with them from America.
Several ruddy-faced and pretty children who were playing in the room
showed that the climate of Sivas was in no way an unhealthy one.
The ladies liked the place; but when they first came here they had
to put up with a great deal of annoyance, owing to the Turkish little
boys. The latter, unaccustomed to see women walking about in European
costume, and with their faces uncovered, had sometimes followed them
in the street and thrown mud at their dresses. Whenever this occurred,
and any elder Turks were present, they had chastised their young
compatriots and put an immediate end to the disturbance.
"I dare say," observed one of the missionaries, "that it was a strange
sight for the people in Sivas to see our ladies walking about the town.
However, if a Turkish woman were put down in the streets of New York,
I reckon that she would have a crowd at her heels before long."
This remark reminded me of an episode which had recently occurred in
America, and which had found its way into the newspapers. It appeared
that a Chinese lad was selling sweets and lollipops in New Orleans,
when a burly native, coming up to him, kicked over the tray and the
boy's wares. The lad, without a word of remonstrance, picked up his
lollipops. The man a second time upset them into the mud. The child
looked at his tormentor, and, collecting his sweetmeats, said to him,
"You are a Christian and I am a heathen; I should be sorry to change
places with you!"
"There are bad people all over the world," remarked one of the
missionaries; "the poor ignorant Turks are not nearly so cruel as some
people would have us believe."
"No, they are not cruel," observed another gentleman, "but they are
pig-headed—that is their great fault. They will not advance with the
times in which they live; if they adopt European inventions, they
copy them blindly, and without adapting them to circumstances. Soon
after the telegraph was invented, the Turks determined to have special
lines, and to use the Turkish alphabet; the man who was employed to
arrange the system copied it blindly from our own. Now 'E' and 'I,'
the fifth and ninth letters in our alphabet, are those which occur
very frequently in an ordinary message; in Europe the telegraph dial
is so arranged as to facilitate the transmission of the letters most
often employed. The Turk, when he came to 'I,' and found it was the
ninth letter in our alphabet, placed the ninth in his own on the same
footing, whereas that letter is, comparatively speaking, but seldom
used."
"A few years ago," observed one of the missionaries, "there was an
Englishman here connected with the Anglo-Indian Telegraph. We were then
as well supplied with information as the people in London or New York.
It was the time of the French war, and all the news was sent daily from
England to Hindostan. Our friend used to tap the wire, and send us a
little budget of information every morning; but now he has gone, and
all that we hear is several weeks or months old."
"There was actually a great deal of difficulty in introducing the
potato plant," remarked another gentleman; "this will give you an idea
of the nature of the people with whom we have to deal. Some foreigners
brought over the seeds and planted them. They came up very well; the
soil is admirably suited for their growth. But the natives would not
eat the potatoes. It was not until the military authorities, who were
short of provisions, supplied them to the soldiers in lieu of other
edibles that the soldiers would partake of this vegetable. They soon
acquired a taste for it, and potato culture is gradually spreading
throughout the district."
"I tell you what it is," said another missionary, "the Turks about
here are just the inside-out-sidest and the outside-insidest,
the bottom-side-upwardest and the top-side-downwardest, the
back-side-forwardest and the forward-side-backwardest people I have
ever seen. Why, they call a compass, which points to the north,
'Quebleh,' south, just for the sake of contradiction, and they have
to change their watches every twenty-four hours, because they count
their time from after sunset, instead of reckoning up the day like
Christians."
The peculiarity of this gentleman's expressions rather struck me at the
time. It was clear that he had not formed a favourable opinion of the
Sultan's Mohammedan subjects; but when I changed the conversation to
the Armenians, I found that the company looked upon them as being quite
as ignorant as the Turks, and much more deceitful.
The good missionaries found the conversion of these superstitious
and ignorant Christians of the East a very difficult and uphill task.
Indeed I subsequently heard from some Armenian Roman Catholics, who
might have been prejudiced in making the statement, that most of the
converts to Protestantism were from amongst the Armenian shop-keepers
who supplied the mission with goods.
"Supposing the Russians were to conquer Anatolia, what would be the
position of the Protestant mission?" I inquired of my hosts.
"We should be immediately turned out of the country to make way for
the Russian priests," was the answer. "The Tzar's Government does not
tolerate any religion save its own."
This remark struck me, coming, as it did, not from an English
Protestant, but from an American, and from an inhabitant of that
country which, in spite of its Republican institutions, has always been
thought to have a great sympathy with Russia.
So the Government of this last-mentioned Empire would not brook any
foreign mission in its territory, and the Emperor would not be likely
to allow American missionaries to impart to the Russian idolaters a
knowledge of the Protestant faith.
Protestantism implies freedom of thought. The right of investigation
would be very displeasing to a despotic set of rulers. The
superstitions and debased form of worship attached to the Greek
religion have no chance of being replaced by our pure Protestant faith,
until such time as the autocratic system of government which prevails
throughout Russia is terminated by a revolution.