The solid block of territory over which Russia now rules on the tableland of Armenia is neither a new acquisition nor the fruit of a single conquest. At the commencement of the last century she gained a foothold upon it by the voluntary accession of the Georgian kingdom and its constitution into a Russian province in 1802. This event, the outcome of the folly of the Mussulman powers, who had driven the Christians to despair, was followed by the rapid expansion of the northern empire in these countries as the result of successful war. Karabagh was taken from Persia in 1813, and the important khanate of Erivan in 1828; from Turkey, the district of Akhaltsykh in 1829, and the fortress and province of Kars in 1878. Appearing as a deliverer of the Christian peoples and profiting by their aid, Russia has succeeded in advancing her border beyond the Araxes and to the threshold of Erzerum, and in establishing herself behind a well-rounded frontier which comprises the venerated mountain of Armenia as well as the seat of the supreme spiritual government to which the Armenians bow.

The Armenian provinces constitute a part of the great administrative system of the Caucasus, which is presided over by a single Governor-General. Formerly it was usual to appoint a Grand Duke to this important post, who exercised, not without advantage to the country, a very large measure of personal initiative. At the present day it is occupied by a nobleman of high rank; but his administration has become much more intimately connected with the bureaucratic machine which is worked from St. Petersburg. He remains, however, the principal civil and military authority in the Caucasus, which consists of no less then twelve Governments, and is divided into North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. North Caucasus is composed of the Governments of Kuban, Terek and Stavropol; while the Governments of Chernomorsk (a narrow strip of coast at the foot of the Caucasus range between Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and a point a little north of Pitsunda), Kutais, Tiflis, Zakataly, Daghestan, Baku, Elizabetpol, Erivan and Kars are embraced under the title of Transcaucasia. Five of the Governments, namely Kuban, Terek, Daghestan, Zakataly and Kars, are still in the military stage of administration. The territories of North Caucasus lie quite outside the scope of the present work; and the Government of Daghestan ought more properly to be classed with the Northern Governments, lying as it does to the north of the main ridge of the Caucasus range. To the same category belong certain districts of the Government of Baku; but for statistical purposes it is advisable to retain them under Transcaucasia, in order to preserve the unity of the Government. On the other hand, the little Government of Chernomorsk may either be left out of account, or be included under North Caucasus. Transcaucasia will thus consist of seven Governments, of which the names and population, according to the two last censuses of 1886 and of 1897, are exhibited in the following table. I must explain that the figures of 1897 have not yet been split up into the different racial elements of which the populations of the various Governments are composed.

TABLE I.—Population of Russian Transcaucasia
(including Russian Armenia)

The admirable volume of statistics for Transcaucasia which we owe to the labours of M. de Seidlitz, and which was published at Tiflis by order of the civil government in 1893, supplies us with the most detailed information concerning these Russian provinces—the numbers of the different races and of the votaries of the various religious sects, and how the inhabitants may be classed and labelled as nobles or clergy, as tradesmen or as tillers of the soil. The figures are derived from the census of 1886, and we are thus presented with a fascinating statistical picture of the country towards the close of the nineteenth century. I do not propose to spoil the effect of his ingenious combinations by transferring them to my own pages in a mangled form; or to forestall the pleasure which the perusal of his serried columns is sure to bring to every well-regulated mind. But their aid will be useful, and indeed indispensable, in fixing upon a surer foundation those more general conceptions and conclusions which are suggested by the experience of travel. The country immediately on the north of the Armenian tableland—the plain of the Rion on the north-west, and the wide trough of the Kur on the north—is inhabited by various branches of the Georgian family and by settlers of Tartar race; while the Caucasus itself, the northern boundary of the whole geographical system, contains within its countless recesses an Homeric catalogue of nations whose names it is difficult to pronounce and whose languages are as mysterious as their names. Of a total population in Transcaucasia of 4,186,000, the Armenians numbered upwards of 962,000 souls in 1886, or a proportion of nearly one quarter. But the importance of the Armenian element must be measured not so much by its numerical strength as by the solidarity of the Armenian people when compared to the peoples among whom they live. The Armenians are little divided by religious differences; the Roman Catholics are a mere handful among the solid ranks of the Gregorians; and the Gregorian Church is not only the symbol of national existence, but the stronghold of national hopes. Two other races in Transcaucasia slightly exceed the Armenians in number; the Tartars with 1,139,000, including Daghestan, and the different divisions of the Georgian family who number over a million souls. But the bitter religious antipathies of Sunni and Shiah divide the Tartars, and the Georgians are in a period of transition from their old feudal system to a new and more settled social order, while the union of their Church with the Orthodox Church of Russia has deprived them of the natural rallying point for that community of sentiment which is based on a consciousness of race pride. Should the Russians become possessed of the Armenian provinces of the Turkish Empire, the most numerous as well as the most solid of the elements of population in Transcaucasia will be furnished by the Armenian race.

The distribution of the Armenians within the present limits of Russian Transcaucasia, but outside the area of the Armenian tableland, may be presented in a concise manner as follows:—In the Government of Elizabetpol, which includes Karabagh, they number 258,000; but only in the Governmental divisions of Shusha and Zangezur, that is to say in the tract of country between the Araxes on the east and the south-eastern shore of Lake Sevan on the west, do they constitute the numerically preponderating race; while in the other divisions and in the whole Government they are largely outnumbered by the Tartars. The Government of Tiflis contains nearly 212,000 Armenians, of whom I shall include 99,000 in my estimate for the tableland itself; the remainder are distributed over the other divisions of the Government, and in the town of Tiflis, where they attain the imposing number of 55,000 among a total population for the nineties of 145,000 souls. In the Government of Baku, out of a total Armenian population of 55,000 there are over 24,000 in the town of Baku itself, where they are engaged in commerce and in the oil works; they are also numerous in the town and district of Shemakha, which lies to the west of Baku. In the Government of Kutais they only number 16,000, and most of these reside in the towns.

The Armenians, being a commercial and industrial as well as an agricultural people, have spread themselves outside the natural limits of their country, attracted to the growing centres of industry upon its confines. They contribute a valuable and increasing element to the urban populations. But it is only when we have crossed the mountains which separate their highlands from the rest of Transcaucasia that we become conscious of treading upon Armenian soil. Throughout its extension from Akhalkalaki and Alexandropol on the north-east to Egin and Kharput on the south-west, that elevated stage of the Asiatic tablelands which we may still call Armenia bears the imprint of the individuality of the Armenian people to a greater degree than of any other race. In the immense expanse of these Armenian landscapes—where blue lakes lie lapped in treeless plains, swelling with ochreous surface from hummock to hill, from hill to some long descending mountain outline that sweeps from the summit of a snow-crowned cone—the note which is uttered by man is lost. Yet there is scarcely a remote valley or lonely island which does not attract a band of pilgrims to worship in the beautiful monasteries which date from the times of the kings of Armenia and keep alive the story of the past. The fertile ground is for the most part tilled by an Armenian peasantry, whose burrows, resembling large ant-hills, are scarcely perceptible in the scene. All the machinery of whatever civilisation the land may possess is furnished by Armenians. The language which you most often hear is the somewhat harsh Armenian tongue; the legends and historical memories which attach to the great works of Nature have for the most part an Armenian origin. Over the area of the Armenian tableland, as it is delimited in the present work, these people are found in nearly double the numbers of any other race. In the preceding chapter I have established the natural frontiers of the country within Russian territory; and in the companion chapter of the second volume I shall hope to perform the same task in respect of the Turkish area. Our present concern is with the population of the Russian provinces of the tableland, which I have endeavoured to exhibit according to its various racial elements in the following tabular statement.

The little map, with which I accompany this table, will make plain to my reader the statistical area with which we are dealing. He will observe that it agrees in a general manner with the area enclosed by the natural frontier. It would not be possible to adapt exactly the statistical information at our disposal, based as it is upon Governmental units, to the geographical boundaries represented by the natural frontier; but those boundaries are so strongly marked that they correspond pretty closely with those of the administrative divisions. Only in two cases does the statistical area, as shown in the map within Russian territory, diverge in a marked degree from the geographical; and in both these cases it would have been easy to have made them approximately coincide. The one occurs about south of Tiflis, where I have preferred to include the ouezde of Borchali within the statistical area. It comprises a transitional region between the natural frontier and the valley of the Kur, presenting many of the characteristics of the tableland, and inhabited in considerable numbers by Armenians. The other is furnished by the administrative division of Olti, belonging to the Government of Kars. My reason for retaining it is principally because it corresponds on the east to the eastern limits of the Turkish vilayet of Erzerum on the west. Both these Governments, of Kars and of Erzerum, overlap into the Chorokh region; and in the case of Erzerum I have not been able to determine the exact boundaries of the overlapping administrative units. With these exceptions the natural area of the Armenian provinces in Russia corresponds fairly closely with the area comprised by the Governments of Erivan and Kars together with the ouezdes of Akhaltsykh, Akhalkalaki and Borchali, belonging to the Government of Tiflis. Karabagh I have excluded both from the geographical and from the statistical area, representing as it does an Armenia in miniature on the side of the Caspian Sea.

TABLE II.—Population of the Armenian Tableland in Russia

(Census of 1886 and figures of 1891 for Kars)

Further analysis of the figures which have just been presented would show that the stronghold of the Armenians, the locality in which they are most numerous, is the rich country through which the Arpa Chai flows on its way to join the middle course of the Araxes. There is situated the fortress and modern town of Alexandropol, which is inhabited almost exclusively by Armenians; and there are placed, a little further south, the remains of the ancient city of Ani, of which the deserted site still testifies to the state and splendour of their kings. The upland plains about Akhalkalaki on the north are dotted with Armenian villages; while the valley of the Araxes on the south, from Kagyzman to Erivan, and especially in the district of Edgmiatsin, contains a considerable Armenian population. The town and district of Novo-Bayazet, on the western shore of Lake Sevan, is for the greater part Armenian. On the other hand, the eastern portion of the Araxes valley, commencing from the town of Ordubad, is held in large numbers by the Tartars, who run the Armenians close in the extensive and important area which is covered by the Government of Erivan. It must be remembered, in reference to the Armenian population of the Russian provinces, that their numbers have been considerably augmented by emigration from Turkey and Persia. It is computed that not less than 10,000 families from the district of Erzerum followed the Russian army out of Turkey in 1829; and numbers of their countrymen—it is said not less than 40,000—had already accompanied the same force from the frontier districts of Persia when it retired from Tabriz at the Peace of Turkomanchai.

Next to the Armenians, the most numerous element in the population are the Tartars, who extend from the Persian frontier up the valley of the Araxes, and cover with their settlements the eastern districts of the plateau region and the whole of Karabagh. The Tartars of Transcaucasia represent a section of those warriors of Turkish race who, from the time of the appearance of the Seljuks down to the end of the eighteenth century, were driven to this country by political conditions from the northern provinces of Persia—that is, from Azerbaijan, and from the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea. Their language is still the lingua franca of the districts between Caucasus and the Armenian plateau. Within the area with which we are now dealing they belong almost entirely to the Shiah sect, and, besides sharing the religion of Persia, contain an admixture of Persian blood. It is not so long ago that their seats in Armenia formed a Persian khanate, and were administered by Persian sirdars; and the wealthy families who flourished during that period are still the owners of extensive gardens, and live on the proceeds of their land. In the humbler walks of life they are distinguished by their skill in all those methods of working mud which are practised in the East; they are plasterers, wall-makers, skilled men in the construction of works of irrigation; while most of the little tradesmen, the hucksters and fruit-sellers are Tartars, and many of the gardeners and drivers of carts. In the country they have passed from the nomadic stage, and are prosperous settlers upon the land. In the town of Erivan, where their numbers equal those of the Armenians, many of the largest gardens are owned by Tartar families, and many of the most prosperous houses of business are in Tartar hands. The degree of religious tolerance which they have achieved in that town was a matter of extreme astonishment to me, when I remembered how often I had in vain resented the bigotry of the Shiahs while travelling within the dominions of the Shah. The Persians are unable to enforce reciprocity in their country, and to repay us for the pleasure and the profit which they may derive in inspecting the great religious buildings of Europe by suppressing and impounding the vicious fanatics who drive us from the doors of their mosques. It is a pleasure to offer a well-deserved tribute to that sense of respect for themselves and for their religion of which the Shiahs of Erivan give so striking a proof by admitting the stranger, whatever his creed, into the innermost courts of their spacious and beautiful mosque; and it is not imprudent to hope and to expect that the narrow path which they are still treading may widen as the years increase. On the other hand, it is not without disappointment that we may note the small progress they have hitherto made in availing themselves of the opportunities of education which the Russian Government have placed within their reach. I have drawn attention to this circumstance in my notice of the schools of Erivan; and it is safe to prophesy that, unless a radical change be soon effected, the Tartars will be edged out by the Armenians and will diminish in numbers year by year.

The remaining peoples native to the country upon whom it is necessary to bestow a passing glance are the Kurds, the Greeks, the Turks, the Georgians and the Karapapakhs. The Kurds within Russian territory have not yet abandoned their nomadic habits; they are found as far north as the country about Batum, but their principal pasture-grounds are on the Turkish frontier and in Karabagh. The Kurds in the neighbourhood of Ararat pursue two main directions during their summer wanderings; one body proceeds towards the north, through the districts of Edgmiatsin and Alexandropol, and stations itself upon the highlands about Akhaltsykh and Akhalkalaki; the other takes an easterly course and enters the Government of Elizabetpol. The total number of Kurds in Transcaucasia is given as 100,000, of whom the larger part inhabit within the area with which we are concerned; the rest are found in greatest number in Karabagh. The Greeks have several villages, principally in the Government of Kars; those which I saw were prosperous, and the gay dresses and trinkets of the women betokened a somewhat higher stage of comfort than that which is usual in the country as a whole. These Greeks speak Turkish and are learning Russian; their versatile genius enables them to change nationality as we take a change of air. They are excellent miners and road engineers; the fine chaussÉe which has recently been completed up the valley of the Toporovan river to Akhalkalaki was constructed by the skilled labour of Greek workmen. The small number of Georgians who are included in our area are found, as would be expected, in the valley of the Kur. In many places the race has received such a large admixture of Turkish blood that the inhabitants, although classed as Georgians, would call themselves Turks, and are in religion Mussulman. In such villages I found much discontent with the existing order, and the evident outward signs of breaking up and decay. The Turks are found almost exclusively in the Government of Kars, which is also the seat of a hybrid tribe called Karapapakhs, or “Black Caps,” from the black lambskin caps which they wear. The origin of the German and of the Russian settlers has already been described in the course of this work (see Ch. VII.); the latter belong almost exclusively to the Dukhobortsy and Molokan sects, expelled by the Russian Church-State from the home provinces of the Russian Empire. The Dukhobortsy must have diminished in numbers to an appreciable extent since the date of these statistics, owing to the recent emigration of large numbers into the bosom of the British Empire (p. 116).

When one reflects upon the social condition of the country, no circumstance is perhaps more striking than the complete separation of one race from another. Although living side by side, there is an entire absence of natural fusion of the different elements upon a common plane. Cases exist both in the Russian and in the Turkish provinces of Armenia where, from a sense of advantage or by compulsion, the people of a particular district have adopted the Mussulman religion during periods of Mussulman persecution, and have become, by intermarriage and closer intercourse, absorbed into the dominant race. I may instance in Russian Armenia the Georgian inhabitants of the valley of the Upper Kur, and across the Turkish frontier the Armenians of the Tortum district and the Greeks of many of the valleys of the peripheral region. But such examples have only aggravated the differences to which separation is due. They have converted the existing prejudices into animosities, and have retarded rather than advanced any tendency towards fusion. When Russia appeared on the scene, it might have been expected that at least in the case of Christians of various professions and nationalities a disposition to draw together might have made itself felt. As a matter of fact the reverse has been the case. To the old religious breaches has been added a new barrier—the hungry Russian Orthodox Church. Certainly in the case of a marriage between a Russian sectary and an Armenian—and I believe also in that of the other professions, should, for instance, an Armenian of the Gregorian persuasion wed a Protestant of the same nation—the children of such a mixed union are required by Russian law to be brought up in the Russian Orthodox faith. It makes no difference that neither of the parents professes that faith. The result has, therefore, been that the old heterogeneous collection have been increased by two more species of the Christian happy family—the Molokans and Dukhobortsy. And upon both is riveted isolation from their neighbours—or in the alternative the necessity of educating their children in a creed and religious system which they abhor.

In such circumstances very little has been effected by the Russian settlers towards raising the standards already prevailing in their adopted country. Inasmuch as these sectaries belong to the flower of the peasantry in Russia, one should, perhaps, regret the presence of any artificial barriers. It is true that they do not stand as high in the scale of peoples as their Armenian neighbours with their ancient but deeply corroded culture and their natural aptitudes—these, happily, unimpaired. But in moral force the Russians are easily superior; and their methods of agriculture, if they were generally followed in the country, would produce an economical revolution. Up to the present time their example has been thrown away. Their neat stone houses, spacious carts, ploughs and field implements have not inspired the Armenians to forsake their ancestral habits—to improve the means of cultivation, and to emerge from their unhealthy burrows into the light and comfort of glass windows and solid walls of stone. This barrenness of result is, no doubt, in part due to the manner in which the Russian immigration took place. Expelled from their native country, the peasants came in whole villages, with their women and their children and their household goods. Their new settlements were grouped together and rendered self-sufficient; and neither the necessities nor the inducements of social intercourse drew them away from their own circles. To the traveller as well as to the native they are a piece of Russia laid down in Armenia; the curious stare and pass on. As an outpost of the northern empire they can be of little value owing to the religious opinions which they profess. It is well known in the country that the Government are reserving vast tracts of land in the hope that some day Russian colonists, these, it is expected, of the Orthodox faith, may be attracted to these salubrious uplands. The climate would suit them well. Should the Germans realise their scheme of colonising Asia Minor, an ethnical redistribution would be accomplished on a large scale. But the population of the country is at present so scanty and its resources so vast, that the Armenians have little to fear from such a development.

Let us now proceed to the political side of our subject, and endeavour to measure the system of government under which these various peoples live. It will be interesting to keep in view both their dispositions towards it and the results, material and moral, which it may be considered to have brought about.

The administration by Russia of the north-eastern half of Armenia has been occupied with races whose more recent political history consists in their passage from one domination to another; and the presence of discontent in certain quarters may be regarded as the inevitable outcome of the change. The Mussulman adherents of the old Turkish dominion share with their neighbours of Turkish origin the humiliation of a fallen state; and their Turkish sympathies and connections, while they excite the suspicions of the Russian Government, dispose them to yield to the lightest pressure, and to cross the border into Turkish soil.6 The Armenians, who have been a mainstay to Russia both in her Persian and in her Turkish wars, whose lands were swept by the tide of battle, and who can recall the memory of conflicts which extended even to the walls of their sanctuary, the cloister of Edgmiatsin, are inclined to temper their sentiments of gratitude with the consciousness of the services which they rendered—services which many among them may be disposed to consider have only resulted in the imposition of a fresh and more burdensome yoke. North of the tableland the Georgian races, whose kingdom, harassed by Mohammedan peoples, was driven to seek assistance outside, have not yet forgotten the disappointment of the hope which many among them had cherished, that Russian intervention might assume the form of a protectorate rather than of a complete absorption of the Georgian element into the Russian State. But such regrets and disillusionments are but the familiar sequel to the constitution of empire upon a new soil; and human nature under such circumstances is more prone to count the loss than to recognise the gain. Over twenty years have now elapsed since Russia completed her subjugation of the Caucasus, whose peoples, untamed for so long a period, menaced the base of her advance; order and peace have been given to the country, and life and property are safe. Georgian children are no longer sold into slavery, and a middle class is forming amongst that people, whose traditional relation to one another was that of noble and serf. An experienced traveller, who visited the Armenian provinces in 1868, and passed through the more fertile regions of the country between Kars and Kagyzman, has left on record a striking picture of the misery of those Mussulman times. He was crossing the district of Shuragel, the ancient Shirak of the Armenians; and he speaks of deserted towns and villages, of Armenian peasants who clung to their ruined homes with a pertinacity of affection which neither poverty nor oppression could subdue, of the dispossession of the Christians by the Turkish Beys, and of the exactions and forays of the Kurds, which had curtailed agriculture and stifled industry, and had reduced both to the extreme limit on which human life is able to subsist.7 If, at the present time, the Armenian peasant gathers for himself the crops which he has sown, and the restless Kurd consults his safety by a sober respect for the law, it is to Russia that the people owe this deliverance from the license and anarchy of former years.

Had the Russian Government confined its energies to the amiable and disinterested task of establishing and maintaining public order as the guardian of a distracted country and the knight-errant who clears the land of thieves, it would have received the ungrudging gratitude of the Armenians, until in the maturity of time they had learnt to walk unaided and to cope alone with those lawless elements which might still resist the yoke of law. When that happy state had been accomplished it might only be natural to suppose that the progressive tendencies of the Armenian would lead him to take counsel with his neighbours and friends, to thank his protectors for past benefits, and to submit that the continuance of foreign tutelage was no longer necessary or desirable in the interests of a country to whose welfare they had contributed so much. To the Russians such a possible, but I think improbable, outcome of all their efforts was scarcely calculated to present so rosy an appearance as their ingenuous wards might have expected or hoped, and, if the advantages offered by the Russian Empire were not sufficiently apparent by themselves, it was necessary to reform and to educate a perversity which sooner or later would yield. The Russians are not a commercial people, and would be content to see the Armenians conduct the commerce of their native country and develop its vast resources, could they but collect the means; but only on one condition were they prepared to encourage such activity: that their subjects should become Russians, and that the province should be joined to the Russian Empire not only by the slender thread of annexation, but by the abiding tie of a common patriotism founded on a community of sentiment with themselves. But just at this point the real difficulties of empire arise. Races who stand on a low scale in Nature have become absorbed into the Russian system by the exertion of little further energy than was required to ingrain in them that wholesome respect for their northern conqueror which the first sharp conflict had inspired; and the broad, expansive Russian character has been able to assimilate them to itself. It is different when, whatever the degree of degradation to which they may have been reduced by Mussulman oppression, a people is conscious of elements of vitality impelling them to higher ideals and standards than those which guide the powerful protectors under whom they have commenced to breathe. An empire which is confronted with such a situation has few alternatives among which to choose. If it cannot attract the subject people towards it—if it cannot accomplish that task of self-change which is more difficult than any problem which the exercise of empire may present—it will sooner or later be driven to adopt the expedients of coercion and repression, and to lower the plane of civilised life by arresting the race for progress in which it was itself unfitted to compete.

Such a political situation can best be gauged and appreciated if we approach it from several different points of view—the nature of the Russian system, the attitude of Armenians in particular towards it, the true significance of such struggles in the larger issues of the outside world.... The kindness and hospitality of the Russian people, the amiable disposition which, in spite of official exigencies, makes them wish the traveller well, the real desire which a large and increasing number among them cherish for social progress at home—are features in the Russian character which the shortest acquaintance will recognise with respect, and which make for the true advance of Russia as a civilised nation among her peers. But the moment that the elements of progress in Russia have asserted their right to rule, the Russian system, as we know it, will die and disappear, and the laws which govern its existence will be subject to new conditions, which may make for closer national concentration rather than for expansion abroad. Such reflections, although not new, are pertinent in this place. The element of finality, always relative, may justly appear in the eyes of many Armenians to be wanting to the political system and to the Government under which they live; and the abhorrence which that system inspires tempts them to convert the thought into a wish. The ultimate outcome of any revolution in the affairs of Russia is too uncertain, and the present evils of her Government are too substantial and apparent to induce them willingly to cast in their lot with the Russian people, and to abandon their hope of fulfilling their destiny in their own manner and, if possible, by themselves.

A people whose commercial activity has brought them into contact with the most progressive races of Europe, and whose natural instinct renders them eager to assimilate Western thought, can scarcely be blamed if they chafe under a system which assumes to establish the opinions they shall hold and to select the books which they shall read, and which subjects every action of their daily life to an inquisitorial control. Such methods are only the manifestations of a settled and uniform plan. The Armenian must sink his individuality and resign his initiative into Russian hands. He must imbue himself with the ideas which his rulers have prepared for him, and which may be opposed to the tendencies and the capacities with which he has been endowed. In such a prospect he recognises nothing to admire and much to fear. He sees the more capable races either driven from the Russian Empire or made the object of a constant jealousy and antipathy rather than of increasing respect. He feels the grip of an organisation which is founded on European methods, and commands all the resources which those methods provide; but he distrusts the hands which wield these weapons, and he is indifferent to the objects to which they are turned. Even the material results of such a system leave him little to hope beyond what he has attained. The resources of the country still lie dormant, and the Government seems to lack the means or else the will to turn them to account. He sees the rich forests of the peripheral region, which might yield a considerable revenue in return for an outlay which would be comparatively small, left unexploited and neglected, while shiploads of wood are entering the ports to supply the requirements of the oil industry. That industry itself he sees promoted by foreign capital in Russian guise, while the jealousy of all foreign capital has closed the door to its beneficent action in the provinces of his home. Only a single military railway traverses the tableland, and there is scarcely a road upon it except such as are rendered necessary by the exigencies of the military arm. A few examples of the economical condition of these provinces may emphasise and explain such statements of a general kind. The two principal towns are Alexandropol and Erivan; yet the road which joins them makes the colossal circuit by the northern shore of Lake Sevan, where it meets the main avenue of traffic between Tiflis and Erivan. From a point further west on this roundabout line of communication a road has been cut with the laudable object of shortening the distance; but the same contempt for the smaller and more irksome duties of life to which we become accustomed in purely Eastern countries has allowed it to fall into ruin by neglect, and we are met by the sight, so familiar to the traveller in the East, of yawning culverts and broken bridges and parallel tracks which have diverged and avoided the perilous surface of the metalled way. In Erivan itself, the chief town of a district where capital might be turned to the greatest advantage, it is impossible or difficult to find a foreign newspaper, while the industrial skill of the advanced races of Europe is not represented by a single foreign enterprise, or, so far as I know, by a single foreign man of business or industrial employee. Persons who know the country well have told me that from the point of view of irrigation, so important a requirement in a land which suffers from want of rain, it has gone back since the times of the Persians, who are experts in such arts. As a consequence of this economical stagnation, the spectacle is often presented in a country which enjoys security and repose of miserable villages, pinched by the scantiest resources and in appearance not more prosperous than those on Turkish soil. I cannot help thinking that many of these evils are due to excessive centralisation in the Russian capital. When the Governor of the Transcaucasian provinces was a Grand Duke residing at Tiflis, he was able to gratify his personal interest in their welfare by the exercise of a large measure of independent initiative and control; at the present day the smallest projects are referred to St. Petersburg, and are made subservient to the general economic policy which governs the Empire as a whole. But such an explanation serves only to display and emphasise the character of the Russian system itself: how small are the prospects which it offers in return for the leaden yoke which it brings.

Little by little, as all danger on the side of the Mussulman states has gradually disappeared, the Russian Government have considered it opportune to apply more drastic methods, and to impose upon the newest of their adopted children a fuller measure of the disciplinary rÉgime. With what instruments they have worked, and how first the Church and next the schools have been the objects of their relentless embrace, has been already told in the foregoing chapters, notably those on Erivan and Edgmiatsin. On their side the Armenians have shown no disposition to adopt Russian ways of thought. The greater has grown the pressure, the more they have writhed and twisted; at the present moment they are lying still with broken wings. The situation is cruel in the extreme. From the Turkish provinces they are beaten up towards the Russian frontier by bands of long-beaked, predatory Kurds. Should they reach their asylum, they are caught in the meshes of a quite impervious network; they are sorted and sifted about by a swarm of active little officials—the police of the districts, the police of the towns, the political police. Camps are instituted where the great majority will be detained at pleasure, to be returned on the first opportunity to their rifled homes. The repetition of this process is causing the decimation of the Armenian people in a surer and much more efficacious manner than any massacres. It is true that the amelioration if not the removal of such conditions lies to some extent in their own hands. “Accept our system, follow the Georgians, and seek spiritual and political salvation within the bosom of the Russian Church-State.” One cannot doubt that in that event the whole weight of the great Russian Empire would be thrown into the scale for the Armenians. What a tempting prospect for a people so sorely tried! Will they not before very long subscribe this obvious solution, for which there is so much to be said? I have put the question to all the Armenians with whom I have enjoyed opportunities of intercourse, and I have put it to those one or two European Consuls who have been in Armenia and know the Armenians well. The answer has invariably been in a negative sense. Many Armenians go so far as to openly profess their preference for the Turkish Government. They state the matter neatly in the form of an antithesis. It is a choice between two Oppressions, one physical and spasmodic, the other moral and systematic. It is not the first time in history that they have been offered the alternative of slavery in body or slavery in mind. A remnant may be absorbed; but the majority will follow their destiny, will wander out, and, perhaps, disappear.

Such is the conclusion, so full of pathos, with such a vein of unconscious satire, throwing curious side lights upon the gilded figures of Christianity and Empire marching down purple steps with arms entwined.... My reader who may know the Armenians from his sad experience of an Armenian dragoman picked up in the Levant, will not, perhaps, be disposed to view the ruin of that people with feelings of keen regret. For myself, coming to the subject free from any prepossessions, but with the lessons of extensive travel in the countries west of India fresh imprinted on my mind, I must freely confess to exactly contrary sentiments. We are living in a time of startling changes in Asia; we are witnesses of one of those great waves from Europe upon Asia of which the tide-marks have all but vanished from the sands of the Present after many centuries of repose and stagnation. Some diversion of the current, it is true, has taken place towards Africa; but the reservoirs of Europe are being filled in a much greater measure than they are depleted by issues in that direction. A new and, to all appearances, a permanent factor of immense potentiality in its reflex influence upon the economy and diplomacy of Europe has arisen in the shape of the United States of America. American competition is already obliging the industrial states of Europe to compose those ancient quarrels which have so often exhausted their great resources, and which have been so long exploited with success by Oriental rulers. Day by day new inventions are annihilating the old-world obstacles of distance and of time. Asia is brought to our doors; and, when we lift the veil in which she has so long slumbered, there is nothing beneath but her fair frame and the flimsiest web of human littleness, yielding to the first and most clumsy attempt to brush it aside.

Nepioi!—We are surely simpletons if through motives of adventure and cupidity we fondly cherish the vision of this long-lost continent parcelled out like virgin ground among ourselves. The Asiatic, with all his debility, is not the African; he is our father, from whose lips we received our first lessons, and his old age, become almost child-like, contains the germs of rejuvenescence, like the gods of ancient Greece. Tenderly and with affection should we approach these old races whom Providence has conducted to our threshold. They will repay us for our forbearance and solicitude. They worship strength; but the display of power in a brutal and ruthless spirit betrays in their eyes, who have seen the passage of so many despotisms, underlying elements of present weakness and certain failure. In some condition, one cannot help feeling, they are likely to survive us, the richer or the poorer for the example and imprint which we may have bestowed.

In the Armenians we have a people who are peculiarly adapted to be the intermediaries of the new dispensation. They profess our religion, are familiar with some of our best ideals, and assimilate each new product of European culture with an avidity and thoroughness which no other race between India and the Mediterranean has given any evidence of being able to rival. These capacities they have made manifest under the greatest of disadvantages—as a subject race ministering to the needs of Mussulman masters. They know well that with every advance of true civilisation they are sure to rise, as they will certainly fall at each relapse.

For nearly a thousand years they have been held in subjection; and it would be folly to expect that they should not have suffered in character by the menial pursuits which they have been constrained to follow. They have been rayas, exploited by races most often their inferiors in intellect; and I need not enlarge upon the results which have followed from such a condition. One should rather wonder that their defects are not more pronounced.

On the other hand, they are possessed of virtues with which they are seldom credited. The fact that in Turkey they are rigorously precluded from bearing arms has disposed superficial observers to regard them as cowards. A different judgment might be meted out were they placed on an equality in this respect with their enemies the Kurds. At all events, when given the chance, they have not been slow to display martial qualities both in the domain of the highest strategy and in that of personal prowess. The victorious commander-in-chief for Russia in her Asiatic campaign of 1877 was an Armenian from the district of Lori—Loris Melikoff. In the same campaign the most brilliant general of division in the Russian army was an Armenian—Tergukasoff.8 The gallant young staff-officer, Tarnaieff, who planned and led the hair-brained attack on the Azizi fort in front of Erzerum, was an Armenian, and paid for his daring with his life. At the present day the frontier police, engaged in controlling the Kurds of the border, are recruited from among Armenians. These examples may be sufficient to nail to the counter an inveterate lie, from which the Armenians have suffered, at least in British estimation, more, perhaps, than from any other supposed defect.

If I were asked what characteristics distinguish the Armenians from other Orientals, I should be disposed to lay most stress on a quality known in popular speech as grit. It is this quality to which they owe their preservation as a people, and they are not surpassed in this respect by any European nation. Their intellectual capacities are supported by a solid foundation of character, and, unlike the Greeks, but like the Germans, their nature is averse to superficial methods; they become absorbed in their tasks and plumb them deep. There is no race in the Nearer East more quick of learning than the Persians; yet should you be visited by a Persian gentleman accompanied by his Armenian man of business, take a book down from your shelves, better one with illustrations, and, the conversation turning upon some subject treated by its author, hand it to them after a passing reference. The Persian will look at the pictures, which he may praise. The Armenian will devour the book, and at each pause in the conversation you will see him poring over it with knitted brows. These tendencies are naturally accompanied by forethought and balance; and they have given the Armenian his pre-eminence in commercial affairs. He is not less clever than the Greek; but he sees further, and, although ingrained with the petty vices of all Oriental traders, the Armenian merchant is quick to appreciate the advantages of fair dealing when they are suggested by the conditions under which his vocation is pursued. A friend with a large experience of the Balkans, with their heterogeneous urban populations, has told me, as an interesting fact, that in the statistics of bankruptcy for those countries the proportion of Armenians implicated is comparatively low. Inasmuch as such bankruptcies are usually more or less of a fraudulent nature, the fact indicates not, perhaps, so much the greater integrity of Armenians, as their power to resist an immediate temptation and their promptitude in recognising the monetary value of commercial stability.

But in order to estimate this people at anything like their true worth, one should study them not in the Levant, with its widespread corruption, but in the Russian provinces of Armenia. Here they have most successfully utilised the interval between the period when the sword of Russia was the sword of the deliverer and that present-day period when the principles which inspire her rulers are those of Pan-orthodoxy and Panslavism. I was so much surprised by the results achieved, and by the contrast which was offered between the sterling progress of this newly-emancipated population and the stagnation and progressive relapse of their neighbours of different nationality, spread over the whole wide area of the Nearer Asia, that, without any certain previous purpose, I resolved to pursue the study further and to protract the journey into Turkish territory. For what was it that I saw? In every trade and in every profession, in business and in the Government services the Armenian was without a rival and in full possession of the field. He equips the postal service by which you travel, and if you are so fortunate as to find an inn the landlord will be an Armenian. Most of the villages in which you sojourn are inhabited by a brawny Armenian peasantry. In the towns, if the local governor attaches to your service the head of the local police, it will be a stalwart Armenian in Russian uniform who will find you either a lodging or a shady garden in which to erect your tents. If you remark on the way some well-built edifice which aspires to architectural design, it will be the work of an Armenian builder from Alexandropol. In that city itself, where the Armenians are most numerous, the love of building, which was so marked a characteristic of their forefathers, has blossomed again among kinder circumstances; a spacious cathedral and several large churches stand among new stone houses fronted with ambitious faÇades. In Erivan each richer merchant has lodged himself in an agreeable villa, of which the Italian architecture rises from the shade of poplars and willows and fruit trees laden with fruit. The excellent wine which is found in Erivan is made according to the newest methods by an Armenian who has studied for two years in Germany the most modern appliances of the industry in Europe. The monetary transactions of the country are in the hands of Armenian bankers. The skilled workmen—jewellers, watchmakers, carpenters—are Armenians. Even the ill-miened officer of mounted frontier police, whose long association with the wilder elements—Kurds and robbers of small and large degree—has lent him the appearance of a chief of brigands, will bear, not much to its honour, an Armenian name. The large majority of the people do not speak Russian, or speak it very imperfectly. Indeed, were it not for the fact that the governors and chief police officials of large districts are Russians, and that Cossacks and Russian regular soldiers may here and there be seen, the traveller would not suspect that he was in a Russian province, and would go the way he listed with the most serene composure until he was rudely awakened by some abrupt collision with the Russian system and brought to his proper mind. As it is, the Armenian has edged out the Russian, and, if Peace were allowed her conquests unhindered, he would ultimately rule in the land.

Such a situation is suggestive; nor can we feel surprise if the Armenian has exercised his Oriental imagination upon it in a manner less prudent than may be calculated to appeal to the slower veined races of the West. The idea of a modern Armenian kingdom has set the spark to that national enthusiasm which the perusal of his historical records has fed. The example of Eastern Europe has seemed to justify his speculations. When I come to deal with the Turkish provinces, I shall endeavour to show the falseness of such premisses; but I do not believe that any such details have influenced his somewhat more general conceptions, and they are not pertinent here. The vision of an independent Armenian state, could it be realised in a remote future, will not appeal to all minds alike. Many will see a real danger to human progress in the creation of these small states. The national sentiment they would place among those realised ideals upon which, as our civilisation widens, it is necessary to build anew. The magnitude of the conflict, should any of the greater nations enter the arena of war, acts as a wholesome preventive to ambitions which the small state is prone to indulge on the least pretence. The gratification of such ambitions causes bad administration and ends in bankruptcy, while few of the advantages which are offered by a great empire can the people of a little country enjoy. Such considerations have great weight, and it would probably be well if, whenever it were practicable, our political actions were founded upon them; yet they scarcely indicate a solution in the present case. The Armenian, who is a convert to such views, might justly ask in what quarter he should look. The Turkish Empire will not even protect him, and massacres its Armenian subjects; while, should he turn his eyes to Russia, he sees no prospects of material advantage which would enable him to rise above the economic stage to which he has already attained, and surrender to Russian ideals could only be effected in his opinion at the price of moral and intellectual annihilation. Confronted with such an outlook, he seeks refuge within himself; and, should he consult his more sober perceptions, he will labour in silence and without ostentation to supply the requirements which his race still needs; to raise the peasant from his present degradation, to purify the Church, to promote the interest of his richer neighbours in work for the common good. These are the more legitimate ambitions which, however tedious, are certain of success, and which will establish, whatever be the revolution of politics, his right to influence the history of his country as one of the only stable native elements of progress in the Nearer East.

If, before concluding these reflections, we turn to the broader issues upon which such questions bear, and, having examined the comparative failure of Russia in Armenia, consider its significance to the larger world, we may find that the very strength of the Russian system as a powerful factor in international life derives from the self-same character which has denied her victory here. Had Russia through a natural process of attraction been able to draw towards her the higher races who stood on her path, she would have been a greater nation, but perhaps a less formidable force. Round her she groups the less cultivated peoples—the nomads of Asia, the wanderers of the steppe—and arms them with the might of a European organisation which the intellect of Europe, impressed into her service, perfects as a weapon for her use. The dangers which such results threaten can only imperil the improvident and those whose nervous powers are unstrung; but the world has not yet advanced sufficiently to render those dangers unreal. The indolence of mind which shrinks from facing difficulties and leaves them to solve themselves is not the least element of weakness in her European neighbours by which Russia profits and through which she grows; but the victory will now as always be given to those states which unite with a higher civilisation a spirit of enterprise still healthy and powers still unimpaired.

END OF VOL. I