CHAPTER XXVII.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 IssekPacha 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 beendoing 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 afterwardslearned 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 streetand 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 anothergentleman, "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 informationevery 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 anAmerican, 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.
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 IssekPacha 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 beendoing 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 afterwardslearned 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 streetand 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 anothergentleman, "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 informationevery 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 anAmerican, 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.