H. F. B. Lynch

Of the various sites which one might select upon the shores of the lake of Van, none would present as great advantages for a populous and self-contained settlement as that of the city from which it derives its name. The great range along the southern coast leaves little respite of even land between the waves and the parapet of rock. The opposite margin of the bosom of waters is filled with the fabrics of those huge volcanoes, Nimrud and Sipan. Sipan, indeed, upon nearer acquaintance, is robbed of some of his apparent extension; and the low outlines on the west and east of the dome-shaped mass upon the horizon will be recognised to belong to a belt of limestone with intrusive igneous rocks which the traveller follows all the way from Akhlat to Adeljivas, and upon which the volcano has built itself up. But those hills, which from the neighbourhood of Van seem to constitute the train of Sipan, are at once rugged and approach closely to the shore. Arjish alone is backed by a zone of fairly even and fertile country; while, as regards the coast between Van and the mouth of the Bendimahi Chai, I do not know that it has ever harboured a considerable city. On the other hand, the alluvial plain which is confined by Mount Varag upon the east, and which may be said to extend from a headland near the village of Kalajik on the north to the high ground just north of Artemid upon the south, affords a considerable area of rich soil, capable under irrigation of producing the choicest fruits of the earth.

Of the beauty of the site it would not be possible to speak too highly; but I tremble to provoke in my English reader a nausea of descriptive writing. The Armenians have a proverb which is often quoted: Van in this world and paradise in the next. The comparison might be justified under happier human circumstances, the perversity of man having converted this heaven into a little hell. Its aptness may be recognised during the course of a walk in the neighbourhood, or from the standpoint of the rock which supports the citadel. In the north across the waters is outspread an Italian landscape—a Vesuvius or an Etna, with their sinuous surroundings, on an Asiatic scale. Nearer at hand and fully exposed, the long barrier of the Kurdish mountains recalls the wildest scenery of the Norwegian coast. From the city herself as from the extremities of the wide basin, the short, sharp ridge of Varag is seen with pleasure to the eye, lifted some 4500 feet above the waters, and, at evening, reflecting the sunset in the most varied hues. The lake is not sufficiently large to separate these various objects by distances which preclude under ordinary conditions the simultaneous enjoyment of the beauty of all from a single shore. And it is large enough to spread at their feet with all the qualities of the ocean—the depth and vastness and changing surface of the high seas.

I.—The Lake of Van

It is about six times as large as the lake of Geneva, having an area of some 1300 square miles. Its western shore is erroneously laid down in existing maps; and this necessitated a particular survey of that region during my second journey, the result of which has been to invest the lake with a shape of greater symmetry—a central body with two arms, one on the north-east, the other on the south-west. The remainder of the outline I have borrowed from the best available sources, adapting them to the position of Van, of which the latitude and longitude are approximately known, and correcting them as well as possible by sketches, and readings to the principal points from the summit of Sipan. If my reader will turn to the map which accompanies this work he will, I think, be able to transfer, with the aid of a few illustrations, the features which are there conventionally delineated into a picture visible by the mind’s eye.

How strange it seems that at the end of the nineteenth century one should be engaged in exploring and mapping this fine country, one of the fairest and most favoured of the Old World! How should we be able to explain, still less to justify, the circumstance to some visitor from another planet? It lies about in the centre of the land area of our hemisphere; the climate is bracing, water is abundant, the sun is warm. Yet it is so little known to the more civilised peoples that their travellers journey thither with the aid of a compass through districts which are now deserts, but which are well capable of supporting the races that are highest in the human scale. The case would appear to have been much the same during the period of the expansion of Greek culture and of the later and beneficent sway of Rome. The knowledge displayed of these regions by representative writers like Strabo, Pliny and Ptolemy is, to say the best of it, vague and fabulous. Yet Strabo, the contemporary of Augustus, was a native of Asia Minor; the countrymen of Pliny had carried the Roman eagles to the Araxes; and Ptolemy wrote during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian whose statue, commemorating his journey through the interior, looked out upon the waves above Trebizond. The first of these authorities plainly confuses the position of Lake Urmi with that of Lake Van; but he is well acquainted with the essential characteristics of both sheets of water, different and strongly marked as these are. The former is described as largest in area, and second in size to the sea of Azof; its name is interpreted to signify the deep blue (??a?? ????e??e?sa). The water is salt; and there are salt works in the neighbourhood.1 The peculiar properties which actually distinguish the latter exactly tally with the language of Strabo, who, speaking next of the lake Arsene or Thopitis, says that it is charged with nitre, which word would seem with him to signify carbonate of soda,2 and that it washes clothes as though they had been scoured. He adds that the water is undrinkable and supports only one kind of fish. And he proceeds to relate a circumstance which is repeated and embroidered by Pliny, and which is so curious that I cannot refrain from extracting the whole passage from the work of the last-named writer.3

“Meet also and convenient it is to say somewhat of the river Tigris. It begins in the land of Armenia the greater, issuing out of a great source; and evident to be seen in the very plaine (fonte conspicuo in planitie). The place beareth the name of Elongosine (or Elegosine, Elosine, Elegos). The river it selfe so long as it runs slow and softly is named Diglito; but when it begins once to carry a more forcible streame it is called Tigris, for the swiftnesse thereof; which in the Median language betokens a shaft (sagitta). It runs into the lake Arethusa; which beareth up aflote all that is cast into it, suffering nothing to sinke; and the vapors that arise out of it carry the sent of nitre. In this lake there is but one kind of fish, and that entreth not into the chanell of Tigris as it passeth through, nor more than any fishes swim out of Tigris into the water of the lake. In his course and colour both he is unlike, and as he goes may be discerned from the other: and being once past the lake, and incountreth the great mountain Taurus, he loseth himself in a certain cave or hole in the ground, and so runs under the hill, untill on the other side thereof he breaketh forth again, and appeares in his likenesse, in a place called Zoroanda. That it is the same river it is evident by this, that he carrieth through with him, and showeth in Zoroanda, whatsoever was cast into him before he hid himselfe in the cave aforesaid. After this second spring and rising of his he enters into another lake, and runneth through it likewise, named Thospites; and once again takes his way under the earth through certain blind gutters, and 25 miles beyond he putteth forth his head about NymphÆum. Claudius CÆsar reporteth, that in the country Arrhene, the river Tigris runs so neere the river Arsania, that when they both swell, and their waters are out, they joyne both their streams together, yet so, as the water is not mingled: for Arsanias being the lighter of the twain, swimmeth and floteth over the other for the space wel-neere of 4 miles: but soon after they part asunder, and Arsania turneth his course toward the river Euphrates, into which he entreth.”

We need not discuss in this place the phenomenon last mentioned, except to remark that the story may well have been suggested by the propinquity of the sources of the Diarbekr branch of the Tigris to the stream of the Murad, the ancient Arsanias. The country of Arrhene is probably the same as that better known as Arzanene, which is comprised within the present vilayet of Diarbekr. Our present interest in the passage lies in the statements relative to the Tigris, that it flows through two lakes called Arethusa and Thospites. Strabo, in speaking of the same phenomenon, attributes it to one lake only, namely that of Arsene or Thopitis. The river, according to him, rises in the Niphates mountains, by which name he seems to be referring to the Nepat of Armenian writers, the modern Ala Dagh. After flowing through Lake Thopitis it disappears in a chasm at the corner of the lake. It comes to light again in the province of Chalonitis; and, although later on he attributes that province to the Zagros, I cannot help thinking that the sense which his informants wished to convey was that it came to light in the mountains of the peripheral region. The mention of two lakes by Pliny need not perplex us over-much; for his Arethusa no doubt denotes the Arjish arm of Lake Van, and his Thospites the principal body of water with the city of Van, the Dhuspas of the cuneiform inscriptions, upon its eastern shore. Ptolemy, on the other hand, entangles the subject still further by separating the lakes of Areesa—no doubt the Arethusa of Pliny—and Thospitis by four degrees of longitude. This geographer does not give us any indications as to the properties of the lake waters; but he tells us that the Tigris is partly a river of Armenia and that its sources constitute Lake Thospitis. The position which he assigns to the town of Artemita—which is probably the modern Artemid—is further evidence that in speaking of Lake Areesa or Arsissa he was in fact referring to Lake Van. One cannot help concluding that his Thospitis with the town of Thospia was actually the self-same sheet of water. The discrepancy in longitude finds a parallel in the degrees assigned by this writer to Lakes Sevan and Urmi. They are really upon the same degree. Yet Ptolemy, under the names of Lychnitis and Martianes, assigns to them the difference of over four degrees.

I think it is plain that the names Thopitis, Thospites, Arsene, Arethusa, and Areesa or Arsissa, are all applied to the great basin with the two immemorial cities, Dhuspas—the modern Van—and Arjish. Moreover, I should be surprised to learn that any lake exhibiting the same properties had been discovered in the belt of mountains south of Lake Van in which the present sources of the Tigris are found. Put together, the scraps of information retailed by the classical geographers go to show that in their days there existed a widely spread belief that the Tigris drew its waters from the tableland of Armenia, flowed through a lake strongly impregnated with soda, and disappeared in a chasm at its further and narrow extremity (????) to come to light again on the further side of the barrier of Taurus or, in other words, of the parapet of mountains which are aligned upon the south coast of Lake Van. The mention of two lakes by Pliny and Ptolemy may point to a former isolation of the Arjish arm. I have taken the trouble to set forth these accounts—though not with all the care that I should desire—because they have an important bearing upon the subject to which I now proceed—a brief notice of some of the peculiarities which distinguish Lake Van.

It may not be out of place to cast one’s look a little further so as to include the other great lakes. That of Urmi in the Persian frontier province of Azerbaijan has an area of 1823 square miles. Its extreme length from north to south is about 80 miles, and its breadth from east to west 24 miles. It resembles its neighbour on the west in constituting an isolated basin, many rivers flowing in but none out. On the other hand its insignificant depth invests it with the character of a lagoon; the average being probably not more than 20 feet and the maximum some 45 or 50 feet. Evaporation must be very rapid over such a sheet of water; and it is at once situated further south than the lake of Van and at a level which is lower by 1500 feet (Lake Urmi, 4100 feet; Lake Van, 5637 feet). Abnormal salinity is the special feature about the waters of Lake Urmi; and extensive beds of rock salt are found in their vicinity. It has been estimated that they are six times as salt as the ocean, though only three-fifths as heavily charged with saline matter as the waters of the Dead Sea. Viewed from a height they are coloured a deep azure, a characteristic usual with salt lakes. If they are allowed to dry upon the body of the bather it is as though he had been covered with flour, and neither fish nor molluscs can live within them. The shores of the lake, which are in general low, are impregnated with salt; and the margin, upon which are found fragments of fossil coral and shell, shines like a white ribbon by the side of the blue. Three boats of not more than 20 tons burden compose the entire fleet of this inland sea.4

Very different is the description which may be given of Lake GÖkcheh (the blue) or Sevan—the Lychnitis of Ptolemy, the lake of Gegham or of Geghark in Armenian literature. It is situated at a level of 6340 feet, and is therefore the most elevated, if also the smallest, of the three great sheets of water upon the surface of the tableland. It lies at a distance of about 130 miles north of the northern shore of Lake Urmi, and close to the barrier of the mountains of the northern peripheral region. Its waters are sweet and support delicious salmon trout; they are said to attain a depth of 360 feet, or, according to another observer, of 425 feet.5 GÖkcheh is in fact essentially an Alpine lake, lying restfully in the lap of a circle of mountains of which those on the southern shore are of eruptive volcanic origin. It has an outlet on the west to the river Zanga, and a portion of its waters find their way through this channel to the Araxes. The balance of opinion inclines to the view that this connection is of artificial origin; and when the lake is low, especially in autumn, the stream will be almost dry.6

But both Urmi and GÖkcheh sink into obscurity when compared to the lake of Van. Almost as large as the one and perhaps deeper than the other, it at once combines some of the characteristics of either basin and adds others essentially its own. Like Urmi its waters are heavily charged, though with soda rather than with salt. Its great elevation and its juxtaposition to the mountains of the peripheral region recall corresponding features in GÖkcheh. But like a book which may borrow much from the work of other writers, and yet produce an effect on the reader which is wholly new, so one opens the landscape of Lake Van with that particular emotion which only very beautiful and original objects can produce. With the wondrous pieces of natural architecture about the margins of this inland sea my reader will become perfectly familiar as this work proceeds. My present object is to fly very low to the ground, and to notice such facts as appeal to the mind rather than to the eye. The extreme length of the lake would seem to measure 78 miles, and the breadth from north to south of the principal body about 32 miles. To all appearance it is very deep except at the north-east and south-west extremities; but no systematic soundings have been taken to my knowledge, though it would be extremely interesting to know whether indications can be traced of the Arjish arm having once composed a separate unit. The principal streams enter the easterly portion of the basin; they are the Erishat or Irshat near Akantz, the Bendimahi Chai, the Marmed and the Khoshab. Several little rivers are collected in the delta below the old Akhlat, and quite a nice stream cascades into the lake at the neighbouring village of Karmuch, which probably collects a portion of the drainage of the plain between Nimrud and Lake Nazik. No issue of the sea has yet been discovered. None of the copious springs which feed the Tigris on the southern side of the parapet of mountain, quite close to the flood washing its northern slopes, has yet been shown to possess any of the strongly marked qualities characteristic of the waters of Lake Van. One of the most remarkable of these springs is situated near the south-west corner of the lake, at Sach in the GÜzel Dere or beauteous valley—a valley with a specially appropriate name.7 It has been examined by Major Maunsell, who describes it as issuing from the base of a cliff and immediately constituting a stream 50 yards wide and 18 inches deep. It is quite possible that this source of the Tigris may have given colour to the belief of the ancients that the river flowed through the lake and found an exit at its further end by an underground channel. Another scarcely less interesting fountain in the neighbourhood is that of Norshen at the head of the plain of Mush. It rises in a circular pool with a diameter of 105 feet, from which it wells over into a stream which runs to the Euphrates. The natives hold that it is in connection with the lake in the crater of Nimrud, and relate how a shepherd, whose staff, weighted with a small parcel of coin, had sunk below the surface of that deep mere, had one day been astonished to see the lost object eddying in the current of the pool of Norshen. Careful scrutiny of the spring during my second journey established the conviction that it affords no outlet to Lake Van. Moreover, its position and the delicious flavour of its water point to its being derived from the limestones of the range on the south of the plain.

Analysis of the waters of Lake Van has furnished results which are described as remarkable by the eminent chemist to whom I submitted the sample which I brought home with me, and which I obtained by swimming out from the rocky shore at Erkizan, some distance east of the abandoned Ottoman fortress of Akhlat. The amount of suspended matter has been found to be very trifling; while the proportion of solids in solution, principally carbonates of potassium and sodium, chlorides and sulphates, is very large indeed. It is estimated that the alkalinity is equal to rather more than 3¼ ounces of ordinary soda crystal dissolved in a gallon of water. The presence of a little silica accompanies the alkali. The account given by Strabo of the cleansing properties of the lake is thus confirmed in a striking manner. Indeed, the bather issues from his swim as though his limbs had been rubbed with soap—but with a soap of extremely agreeable quality, leaving a velvety feeling upon the skin. The great buoyancy of the waves enhances the pleasure of such exercise, and they are at once pellucid and sparkling under the ruffle of the breeze. On the other hand they are most unpleasant to the taste. The colour of the sheet of water cannot be given in a single word; and indeed it varies with extraordinary range of scale. A cobalt of great brilliancy is perhaps the most normal hue; but a certain milky paleness is seldom quite absent, becoming invested at morning and evening with an infinite number of delicate tints.8

Only one kind of fish is found in Lake Van, resembling a large bleak. But, often as I have bathed, I have never seen one gliding through the water, or surprised a shoal while following the shore. It is possible that they adhere to the estuaries of the rivers, up which they make their way in large numbers to spawn during the season of spring freshets. It is then that they are caught in great quantities by means of barriers placed at the mouth of the streams with baskets resting against one side. The fish leap the barrier and fall into the baskets, after which they are dried and salted. Seagulls and cormorants haunt the lake, but are not very numerous; nor have I observed a pelican, although these birds are conspicuous on the adjacent lake of Nazik together with many varieties of smaller waterfowl. The main body of the sea never freezes over in winter, rigorous as that season is at this high altitude.

A feature which has occupied considerable attention, especially among German writers, is the fluctuation in level of these Armenian lakes. There can be no doubt that they are all three subject to more or less pronounced periodical changes; and various reasons have been assigned. Do these fluctuations arise from the opening or closing of subterraneous issues or from movements of the earth’s crust? Or may they be accounted for by ordinary climatic conditions, such as the fall of snow and rain and the consequent variation in the volume of the rivers and in the activity of springs? The economic state of the country and the extent of irrigated land within the watershed has been recognised as a factor, but a factor of insufficient importance to produce the recorded results during the period reviewed. In the case of Lake Van we are precluded from attributing these fluctuations to the agency of subterraneous issues. Not a single one of such has yet been discovered. Nor am I aware that any such outlets to GÖkcheh or Urmi have been noted by any traveller. The evidence which may be collected in the case of all goes to show that the islands are as much affected as the adjacent shores. It may therefore seem unlikely that the changes arise from movements at the bottom of the lake; for these would lift or depress the islands to some extent.9 If I venture to join in the discussion I would submit the suggestion that we should for convenience group the phenomena under two heads. Temporary variations should be distinguished from any differences of a more permanent nature the existence of which it may be possible to prove.10

It cannot be expected that we should be able to collect evidence of a satisfactory nature in respect of the changes which would fall within the first category. We have to rely upon the statements and even upon the inferences which may be derived from the writings of travellers. Even if we could rest contented with the accuracy and sufficiency of such testimony in the case of lakes which are so much affected by the melting of the winter snows, it would not establish, except in a very approximate manner, the beginnings and ends of the successive phases. Still, the subject is so interesting that it is worth while to collate the observations of which record may be found. In the subjoined table I have endeavoured to perform this task; and it has already been undertaken with great diligence by Dr. Sieger. It will be seen that a certain correspondence may occasionally be traced in the periodical fluctuations which have affected the three sheets of water.11 Perhaps the most remarkable evidence in this sense is that which is furnished by the almost simultaneous observations for 1898. Messrs. Belck and Lehmann for Lake GÖkcheh, Mr. GÜnther for Lake Urmi, and my companion, Mr. F. Oswald, and myself for Lake Van, all bear witness to a rise in quite recent years. Our own investigations were made during the month of July of that year, and were confined to the westerly inlets of the lake. A prominent feature about these inlets was the tendency of the streams to form shallow lagoons behind a narrow barrier of alluvial sand. On the margin or even in the bed of such lagoons one might often see a group of willows. Some had been immersed a foot or two by the rise in the waters; and, while their neighbours on dry land were green and thriving, these were quite dead. The most notable example was observed by Oswald within the little broken-down crater on the southern shore opposite Akhlat. It receives the lake within its enfolding arms. We have called it Sheikh Ora after a little village of that name which was discovered in its south-east corner. Oswald sailed across to examine this interesting spot while I was busily engaged at Akhlat. Between the village and the water he came across a small grove of willows upon which the lake had gained. Those above the water line were evidently flourishing; but those which stood in the lake had been killed and their bark withered, so that many of the stems were quite gaunt and bare. The average diameter of the trunks of the dead and the living was not appreciably different. It was therefore not a question of an advance of the lake dating back very many years. On the other hand there had been time for the chemical properties of the water to exercise their destructive effect.

TABULAR STATEMENT OF THE EVIDENCE OF TRAVELLERS IN RESPECT OF THE FLUCTUATIONS IN LEVEL OF THE THREE GREAT LAKES.

Year.	Lake Van.	Year.	Lake Urmi.	Year.	Lake GÖkcheh.
1806	Jaubert attests a gradual rise in the waters, threatening Arjish and the suburbs of Van (Voyage en ArmÉnie, etc., p. 139).	1811	Morier attests a relapse. The former island of Shahi has become joined to the mainland by a swampy isthmus during the last two or three years (Second Journey, p. 287, seq.).
		1812 to 1829	Progressive relapse of about 10 feet during this period attested by Monteith (J.R.G.S. 1833, vol. iii. p. 56).
1838	Brant attests a relapse which, according to the natives, has effected a gain of one mile in ten years to the plain on which Arjish stands (Journal R.G.S. 1840, x. p. 403).	1834	Relapse attested by Fraser since his last visit in 1822 (Travels in Kurdistan, pp. 47 seq., and Narrative of Khorassan, p. 321).
				1830	A low level, perhaps a minimum, is attested by Monteith. The canal to the Zanga is an insignificant runnel, supplying the river with the smallest portion of its waters (J.R.G.S. 1833, vol. iii. p. 43).
1838	Loftus records a rise on native authority, commencing during the winter. In twelve months, viz., by the winter of 1839, the lake is said to have risen nearly 6 feet. In the next two years, viz., by 1841, it is said to have risen altogether 10 to 12 feet, necessitating the evacuation of Arjish by the inhabitants, the place becoming an island (Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc. 1855, p. 318).	1838	Autumn. Rise attested in general terms by Rawlinson (J.R.G.S. 1840, vol. x. p. 8) and more precisely in 1839, by Perkins on native testimony (Residence in Persia, Andover, 1843, p. 394). Rise has been gradual.
				1856	Lieut. Owerin of the topographical staff of the Caucasus, estimates that nearly ?th of the waters of the lake find an egress through the canal to the Zanga (Petermann’s Mitt. 1858, p. 471). Other evidence goes to show that in the forties and fifties the lake was certainly higher than in Monteith’s time.
1847	Hommaire de Hell attests a relapse (Voyage en Turquie, etc., quoted by Sieger, Schwankungen, p. 6).
1850	Layard attests a rise “during the last few years.” Many villages on the margin are partly submerged. Iskele, the port of Van, is still in- habited; but the greater part of the village is under water (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 408). [Layard was perhaps only witnessing the effects of the rise which commenced 1838.]
				1859 to 1879	Relapse during this period is assigned to the lake by Brandt (Zoologischer Anzeiger, ii. 523 seq.), from whose observations we may infer a minimum about 1879. Islands had formed; these again had become a peninsula. The canal to the Zanga seems to have been scarcely operative at all.
1852	Loftus attests a considerable relapse during recent years, said by the natives to have commenced in 1850. Arjish is connected by a passable isthmus to the mainland for eight months in the year (op. cit. p. 318).	1852	A relapse is attested by Perkins to Loftus (Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc. 1855, p. 307).
		1856	Rise may be deduced from N. von Seidlitz who seems from a distance to have seen Shahi, an island in October (Petermann’s Mitt. 1858, pp. 228, 230).
1863	Strecker records a continuous rise during the years preceding his writing, as evidenced by Turkish officials of his acquaintance (Petermann’s Mitt. 1863, pp. 259 seq.)			1891	Relapse has continued. Trees planted thirty years ago on the margin of the water at the island of Sevan are now standing some 50 feet away, and some 7 to 10 feet above the lake level. (Belck in Globus, vol. lxv. p. 302).
1875	A maximum at about this period may be inferred from the accounts given by Bishop Poghos of Lim to Dr. Belck (Globus, vol. lxiv. p. 157), and by the Rev. Mr. Cole of Bitlis to Dr. Butyka (Globus vol. lxv. p. 73). From this period there appears to have been a gradual relapse until 1892, and possibly later.
				1898	Rise dating back several years is attested by Belck and Lehmann. The trees alluded to above are now standing in the water (Zeitschrift fÜr Ethnologie, 1898 p. 414).
		1898	GÜnther chronicles a rise during the last two years on native evidence (J.R.G.S. November 1899, p. 510).
1898	Evidence of Oswald and myself infers a rise during the last few years.

The same phenomenon of a rise in level was apparent on the margin of the large lake in the crater on Nimrud. There the brushwood, representing the growth of many years, was submerged; and much had already perished from want of sustenance. All the evidence points to the fact that such changes are of a temporary nature, and that a period of increase is followed by one of decline. The most probable explanation is that they are due to climatic conditions, which, it is well known, are variously operative over cycles of years. In the absence of any observatory in these countries this question is largely a matter of surmise or, at best, of inference. The existence of such periodical fluctuations may be regarded as having been established; it remains to consider the changes of a more permanent order.

We must not forget that at a period relatively recent in geological time this lake of Van was but a part of an extensive inland sea, which appears gradually to have become divided up into a series of basins. There can be little doubt that down to quite a late geological epoch no such barrier had been constituted between this basin and that of the plain of Mush, which immediately adjoins it upon the west. The waters have left their mark upon the rocky boundaries of that plain; and to their action I do not think we should err in attributing the peculiar appearance of the basal slopes of the KerkÜr Dagh, where they face the great depression of Mush. To the same period perhaps belong several terraces which may be traced upon the bush-grown face of the southern coast of Lake Van between Garzik and the GÜzel Dere. The highest of these is perhaps the most conspicuous, and may be situated at an elevation of a hundred feet or more above the present level. Just as the waters of the plain of Mush were drained away through a narrow opening in the mountains which hem it in upon the west, so it is quite likely that a similar vent was offered by the gorge which cuts through the parapet of Taurus in the direction of Bitlis, and at the present day affords an easy passage to the caravans from the plains of Armenia into the defiles of Kurdistan. Loftus chronicles a tradition that the waters of Lake Van cover a plain that was once studded with villages and gardens. The streams of Arjish and the Bendimahi Chai—and presumably the Khoshab—are said to have met and formed one large river about midway between Arjish and Bitlis. His informants were under the belief that it had issued from the plain through a hole in the earth; and that when this passage had been closed up by a sudden convulsion the present lake formed.12 This story is at least not lacking in verisimilitude, so far as the existence of a former river is concerned. This river would have probably flowed to the Tigris, of which it would have been the principal branch. The cause of its being dammed up was perhaps the outpouring of lavas from Nimrud, which have formed the plateau between Tadvan and the head of the plain of Mush—a plateau which rises to a height of 680 feet above the lake, and, extending across from Nimrud to the face of Taurus in the south, chokes the entrance to the Bitlis gorge. It is this barrier which actually maintains the lake of Van. No eruptions on this scale are recorded during the historical period; and, of course, it is not impossible that they were originally submarine.

These phenomena, which are partly attested by the ancient lake terraces and in part suggested by the general structure of the country, belong to an epoch which, if quite modern from the standpoint of the geologist, probably lies beyond the range of the archÆologist as well as of the historian. Much the same conditions as at the present day appear to have prevailed during the historical period—a vast sheet of water, deep and translucent, dammed up by the volcanic barrier at its westerly extremity. I think there can be no doubt that the permanent tendency of this sheet of water has been to rise in level. Moreover, all the evidence is to the effect that this tendency has been operative in the case of the other two seas. Dr. Belck has recorded that in the year 1890 during the month of July he came across a little lake at the eastern end of Lake GÖkcheh, separated from it by a tongue of land scarcely more than 55 yards broad, and connected with it by a stream descending from the mountains and piercing through the isthmus. On the margin of this shallow lagoon, near the outflow of the stream, he discovered an ancient Armenian graveyard of which the stones were under water. When he returned in August of the following year they were only just dry. His visit coincided with the latest stage of a period of decline; and it seems certain that since the time when the cemetery was constituted the norm about which the fluctuations oscillate had risen in a marked degree. The same traveller draws our attention to the interesting circumstance that the three last lines of the cuneiform inscription of Rusas the First (c. 730–714 B.C.), cut in the face of the rock overlooking that same northern lake, have been almost completely destroyed by the erosion of the waters, although placed just above their level in 1891. It seems incredible that the Vannic king should have engraved his memorial in a situation where it would be exposed to the periodical floods.13 As regards Lake Urmi I need only recall the important discovery of Mr. GÜnther in 1898. In the islands of that sea he found many species of living animals which could not have crossed the stretch of salt water, amounting to a distance of some 10 miles, that at present separates their homes from the shore. In his opinion the zoology affords conclusive testimony of these islands having been joined to the mainland at no very distant date. Upon one of them he found the skeleton of a wild sheep.14 The evidence which may be collected upon the shores of Lake Van all points in the same direction of a progressive upward tendency.

Strecker has thrown out the suggestion that this process may be accountable for the junction of the Arjish arm to the main body; and that we may therefore attach some credence to the statements of Pliny that in his time there were two lakes.15 However this may be, we are not dependent upon such hypotheses, or upon the stories current of submerged causeways or bridges. The three old fortresses of Akhlat, Adeljivas and Arjish all bear testimony to a considerable rise in the level of the lake since the days when they were built. The walls of the first two on the side of the water have either fallen in or are being slowly undermined. Arjish has been permanently abandoned by its inhabitants. Immemorial villages, like that of Kizvag between Akhlat and Tadvan, are being menaced by the latest periodical increase, which seems to have commenced about 1895. Nature herself speaks eloquently in the same sense. An ancient walnut-tree which stands on the rocky bank of the lake in the gardens of Erkizan, a quarter of Akhlat, had already been deprived of a great portion of its foothold when we encamped beneath its boughs in 1898. In the Sheikh Ora crater a giant mulberry, which may have been some 500 years old, was standing with half its roots in the water and was already doomed. The most obvious explanation of this gradual rise in the norm of the lake level is furnished by a cause, which must be constantly operative, namely the increase of sediment deposited upon the bottom. But whether this factor by itself be sufficient to have produced such important changes is a question upon which I am not qualified to pronounce an opinion.16

Deep in the curve of the bay, which with minor indentations extends from the promontory and island of Ktutz to Artemid, lies the isolated rock with the mediÆval city at its southern foot and the long line of gardens stretching eastwards across the plain towards the slopes of Mount Varag. These various features are disclosed or suggested in my illustration (Fig. 123), which was taken from those distant slopes. But before I invite my reader to explore the ancient township, something must be said upon a topic which here fascinates the traveller’s interest equally with the characteristics of the strange lake beside which he sojourns. I have already on several occasions remarked upon the insignificance of the human element in these Armenian landscapes. At Van for the first time we become sensible of a different impression, derived, not indeed from the peoples who now inhabit the country, but from the monuments of a remote civilisation which abound in the neighbourhood, and of which the spirit is wafted towards us across the ages. Here the massive substructures of an aqueduct, there the Cyclopean masonry of the fragment of a wall tell the tale of man’s mastery over Nature, and insensibly conjure the vision of the plains crossed by great roads, the rivers spanned by bridges, the fertilising waters brought from afar. Our curiosity is enhanced by the inscriptions in the cuneiform character which are deeply incised in the hard stone of the various works. But it rises to the degree of fervour when we survey the rock of Van, clearly recognised as the very navel of this old polity. Its precipitous sides are quite a library of inscriptions, carved upon their face in spaces polished by human hands. Square-cut shadows disclose the entrances of chambers hewn into the calcareous mass at a considerable height above the level of the plain. And something in the spirit of the works and in the choice of situation at once distinguishes them from the rock dwellings, such as those at Vardzia near Akhalkalaki, with which we have become familiar during the course of our journey south. It is evident that in their original purpose they were only a feature of a large design which mocks the scale of the existing fortifications.

By what people were they inscribed, these regular lines of elegant characters; and who were the kings who sojourned upon this delightful platform, which seems to have been raised by a freak of Nature in the midst of the plain with its westerly extremity almost reaching into the lake? Armenians, Persians, Arabs, Seljuks, Tartars, Turkomans, Turks—all have come and passed or stayed, and none have been able to return an answer to the question invited by the writings on the citadel. They have had recourse to the resources of Oriental legend, or have been content with the explanation that these inscriptions are talismans, sealing treasures long since buried in the heart of the rock. The fame of the place is widely spread over all the surrounding country, forming as it does the kernel of a populous city on the confines of Armenia and Kurdistan. It has been described by the national historian of the Armenians in terms which in many respects portray the existing features in a singularly faithful manner. Moses of Khorene attributes the works to an Assyrian queen Semiramis, and relates on the authority of Mar Abas Katina and from ChaldÆan sources the story of her fruitless passion for the reigning king of Armenia, Ara, and of the death of that monarch while resisting her endeavours to obtain his person by force. The queen is said to have accompanied her armies to the northern kingdom, and to have founded the city as a summer residence for her luxurious court. The tale is beset by incidents which reveal its fabulous nature; and the historian informs us that several such legends relating to Semiramis were current among his own countrymen.17 At the same time he deplores the lack of culture among his ancestors, to which he ascribes the absence of native annals.18

It has been reserved for our own age to penetrate the mystery, which, indeed, is only now as I write being dispelled. Quite early in the nineteenth century, while the future excavators of the Assyrian cities were either unborn or were still in their nurseries, a young French student, Jean Antoine Saint Martin, the son of a tradesman in Paris, was fired by the account of the inscriptions at Van contained in the pages of Moses of Khorene.19 Mainly through his efforts the French Government—always solicitous of the interests of culture—were induced to despatch a mission to Armenia in 1827, engaging the services of a young German professor, Friedrich Eduard Schulz. The first report of the explorer was published by Saint Martin in 1828.20 By a piece of misfortune, happily rare in the annals of travel in these countries, Schulz was murdered by the Kurds in 1829. But his papers were recovered and brought to Paris, where they seem to have awaited in obscurity the awakening of interest in Oriental antiquities which was consequent upon the discoveries of Burnouf, of Lassen, and of Rawlinson. An instructive memoir, together with copies of forty-two inscriptions at Van and in the neighbourhood, appeared under his name in 1840 in the pages of the Journal Asiatique. Schulz’s copies have been found to be in the main remarkably accurate, although he had not the smallest knowledge of the language in which they were composed. Little by little the contents of the tablets in a similar character which are spread over Persia yielded up the secrets which they had so long maintained; and the excavations in Mesopotamia furnished Orientalists with the necessary material to enable them to understand the languages of the cuneiform inscriptions furnished in such profusion by the buried cities of the plains. But with the exception of the great tablet in three columns and as many tongues which is such a conspicuous object on the southern face of the rock of Van (Schulz, Nos. IX., X., and XI.), and an inscription on a stone in the remains of a wall at its base (Schulz, No. I.), none of the Vannic records agreed with the syllabaries already discovered, or could be translated into any known language. Schulz had indeed perceived that the first of these monuments contained the names and titles of Xerxes, son of Darius; and when Layard visited Van and took new copies in 1850, it had come to be recognised that this tablet of Xerxes resembled other AchÆmenian inscriptions, and was very nearly word for word the same as those of this Persian monarch at Hamadan and Persepolis.21 The characters upon the stone in the wall were exactly the same as those of Assyrian writings; and, although the inscription had not been satisfactorily deciphered when Layard’s book was published, that investigator was able to discern that the language also was Assyrian, while that of all the remainder, in spite of the similarity in character, was peculiar to Van, and baffled decipherment. In the meanwhile other equally perplexing inscriptions had been discovered in districts of the tableland remote from the city of Semiramis; and a partially successful endeavour had been made by the English Orientalist Hincks to read the mysterious texts.22 But the problem remained unsolved for very many years, while the stock of inscriptions collected by travellers in various parts of Armenia was continually increasing. A great step forward was made by the discovery by M. Stanislas Guyard, announced in 1880,23 that the phrase at the conclusion of many of the Vannic texts represented the imprecatory formula found in the same place in their Assyrian and AchÆmenian counterparts; and this enabled Professor Sayce of Oxford to proceed rapidly with their decipherment, upon which he had been engaged for some years.24 Mainly as the result of his labours we are now enabled to gather their meaning, and to add a new language and a new people to the museum of the ancient Oriental world. Since he has written, the number of known Vannic texts has been doubled by the German scholars and travellers, Professor Lehmann and Dr. Belck. They have also, in a series of most instructive articles, called up the vanished civilisation from the grave.25

We now know who built Van and by whom these tablets were engraved upon the face of the citadel. As the horizon opens with each advance in our acquisition of the vocabulary and with each addition to the catalogues of texts, we are introduced to no obscure dynasty which slept secure behind the mountains, but to a splendid monarchy which for at least two centuries rivalled the claims of Assyria to the dominion of the ancient world. The native designation of the imperial people was that of Khaldians or children of Khaldis, just as the Assyrians reflect the name of their god, Assur. The constitution of the State was that of a theocracy in which Khaldis occupied the supreme place. The company of the remaining deities were spoken of as his ministers, and the whole land appears to have borne his name.26 It was the wrath of Khaldis that was invoked against whosoever should destroy the tablets; and with him were coupled in a kind of Trinity the god of the air and the sun-god. The seat of Khaldis was the city of Dhuspas, the modern Van; and all conquests were made by the king in his name. Dhuspas was the capital of the territory of Biaina, from which the king derived his title. We can readily trace through literature the corruption of the word Biaina into the existing form, Van; it figures in the shape of Buana in the writings of Ptolemy and in that of Iban as late as Cedrenus.27 In the course of time it had come to be applied to the city; while the name of the city was transferred to the province in which it was placed, and became the Dosp or Tosp of Armenian writers.28 The contemporaries and rivals of the Vannic monarchs, the rulers of Assyria, styled the northern kingdom Urardhu or Urarthu; and this is the same name that appears in the Bible in the familiar form of Ararat. They make no mention of the local appellation of Biaina; although it seems possible that the district called Bitanu or Bitani in the Assyrian inscriptions may be connected with the latter name.29 On the other hand there can be little doubt that the Turuspa of the Assyrian annals is the Dhuspas of the monuments of Van.

The Khaldians take their place in this new chapter of history at least as early as the latter half of the ninth century before Christ. Their language was neither Semitic nor Indo-European; and it is therefore impossible to connect them either with the Assyrians, who were Semites, or with the Armenians, who belong to the Indo-European family. They ruled over the tableland which is now Armenia before the Armenians had appeared upon the scene; and it was the movement of races with which was connected the Armenian immigration that seems ultimately to have occasioned their dispersal and the overthrow of their power. Their dominion appears to have been due in no small degree to the happy choice of Van as their capital. Assyrian history ranges beyond the probable date of that foundation, to a period when Urardhu was perhaps an obscure province in the neighbourhood of the modern Rowanduz in Kurdistan. The Assyrian armies in their marches northwards were opposed by a confederacy of petty princes whose country is called Nairi in the Assyrian inscriptions. That loose term evidently embraced a considerable portion of the Armenian tableland; for it was in the plain of Melazkert that the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser I. (c. 1100 B.C.),30 overthrew the united forces of the kings of Nairi and erected a memorial tablet which has been preserved to the present day.31 In a restricted sense the name Nairi was applied by the Assyrians to the province about the middle and upper course of the Great Zab; and the lakes of Van and Urmi, between which that territory was situated, were both known as the Upper seas or seas of the land of Nairi, Lake Van being sometimes distinguished as the Upper sea of the West, and Lake Urmi as the Eastern or even as the Lower sea.32 The kingdom of Urardhu is for the first time mentioned by the Assyrians in the reign of Ashur-nasir-pal (885–860 B.C.); but it is not before the ensuing reign of Shalmaneser II. (860–825 B.C.) that we have certain evidence of an Assyrian army marching into Armenia to attack the territories not of a league of Nairi princes but of a monarch of Urardhu. This prince, of whom no records have been discovered in Armenia, is called Arame. His capital, of which the site is at present unknown, but which certainly lay to the north of Lake Van, bears the name of Arzasku. Arame was signally defeated in 857 or 856 B.C. and abandoned his capital. His cities as far as the sources of the Euphrates (Murad?) were taken by Shalmaneser in 845 or 844 B.C. When next we hear of a king of Urardhu we are able to recognise in his name the earliest of the rulers who appear in the Vannic texts. And this monarch, Sarduris the First, the contemporary of the same Shalmaneser and his antagonist about 833 B.C., was the founder of the fortress of Van.

No better position for a stronghold against a Power operating from the lowlands in the south could have been discovered by the builders of an empire on the Armenian plains. In the later phases of the history of Armenia the movements of empires and peoples have generally proceeded between the east and the west. Against such currents the city of Van composes a minor obstacle, which they avoid on their more normal and northerly course. Always secure with a fleet on the lake and the passes of Mount Varag fortified, the true military value of the place only advances into first-rate importance when the centres of the hostile forces lie in Mesopotamia. It is screened in that direction by perhaps the most impenetrable section of the entire outer or Iranian arc of the peripheral mountains which support the tableland.33 Moreover, the circumstance that the arc has snapped and sent out a splinter into the districts on the north, represented by the mountains in which the Great Zab has its source, and, further north, by the elevated but not impassable waterparting between the basin of Lake Van and that of the Araxes, has had the effect of concealing Van within the fork of a twofold parapet where it reposes with its back against the complex barrier and defies attack from the south or south-east. The approach from the west along the southern shore of the lake is interrupted by the spurs of the great range; and the Assyrian armies were compelled to make the dÉtour by the plain of Melazkert, gaining the plateau by one of the passes north of Diarbekr and leaving it upon their return home through one of the passages east of Rowanduz where the sea of mountains settles down to a regular course. Such an immense circuit through a hostile country necessitated resources on a vast scale, the existence of which among the Assyrians fills the mind with admiration when we contemplate the squalor of the Oriental empires of the present day. But there can be no doubt that all the advantages lay on the side of their northern adversaries, to whom was offered a reasonable chance of annihilating their hosts, or, in the event of defeat, the secure alternative of shutting themselves up in their capital and there awaiting the passing over of the storm. These considerations serve to explain the comparative immunity and the rapid development of the empire of the successors of Sarduris the First; at a time, too, when Assyria was governed by such warlike monarchs as Shamshi-Ramman and Ramman-nirari.34 It was reserved for Tiglath-Pileser the Third to beard the lion in his den, and to appear before the walls of Van. But even this gigantic figure failed to capture the citadel, although he appears to have destroyed the garden town at its feet (735 B.C.).35 The ultimate effects of his campaign may be measured by the fact that the inveterate and sometimes successful adversary of Sargon (722–705 B.C.) was the Vannic king Rusas the First. And the northern empire is still a force with which the Assyrians have to reckon as late as Ashur-bani-pal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks (668–626 B.C.).

So far as our knowledge at present extends we may regard Sarduris the First as the initiator of a remarkable and far-reaching revolution among the peoples of the tableland. The title which this monarch bears, that of king of Nairi, as compared with that of his successors, kings of Biaina,36 connects him with the earlier period of the confederacy of Nairi princes which his dynasty under the Ægis of the god Khaldis was destined to supplant. His son, Ispuinis, and his grandson Menuas at once extended the empire and added to the works upon the citadel of Van; and the latter was the principal author of that magnificent canal which to the present day under the fanciful name of Shamiram-Su, or river of Semiramis, conducts the waters of the Khoshab to the suburbs of Van.37 Menuas may, therefore, be considered as the founder of the garden town; although at that time it is probable that it was situated south of the citadel rather than, as is now the case, at some distance to the east.38 During the reign of the successor of Menuas, Argistis the First, the Vannic dynasty reached the zenith of its power. The kinglets of the valley of the Araxes had been dispossessed of their fertile territories, and the great city which was afterwards known as Armavir rose from the banks of the river in honour of the god of Van. The whole extent of the Armenian tableland, such as it is described in the present work, with the possible exception of some of the most northerly districts, was subject to the rulers residing on the shore of the great lake; and their inscriptions recording conquests are found as far east as the province south of Lake Urmi and as far west as the Euphrates near Malatia. In that direction they came in contact with the Hittites; while their neighbours on the east were none other than the Minni of Scripture, residing in the more southerly portion of the Urmi basin and the adjacent districts.39 The inscriptions on the rock of Van enumerate the feats of arms of Argistis the First and Sarduris the Second. No records have yet been found further north than Lake GÖkcheh, Kanlija, near Alexandropol, and Hasan Kala, near Erzerum. South of their capital the wild districts of Shatakh, Norduz and Mukus have been scoured by travellers in quest of such monuments, but hitherto without result.

With one exception no systematic excavations have yet been made upon any of the sites of the cities and strongholds of the Vannic kings. When these shall have been undertaken we may expect to have drawn an impressive picture of the attainments of their people in the arts. The single instance of such efforts—and it is not one of which we need be proud40—has been directed to the low limestone hills which overlook the gardens of Van upon the north, and which in their neighbourhood bear the name of Toprak Kala. In or about the years 1879 and 1880 operations were conducted upon this eminence under the direction, as I have gathered, of Captain Clayton, then our consul at Van, and of Mr. Hormuzd Rassam.41 Tunnels were opened into that part of the site which disclosed the buried remains of an ancient settlement, and which was found to have been covered with buildings composed for the most part of sun-dried bricks. The most important result of the enterprise was the laying bare of a temple, still containing quite a number of bronze shields with cuneiform inscriptions, embossed and chased with ornamental designs and the figures of animals. Some of these may be seen in the British Museum and others in the Museum at Berlin. They represent votive offerings on the part of the kings, and were suspended upon the walls in the manner shown by an existing bas-relief from the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad. Indeed that sculpture portrays the destruction by the Assyrians of the temple of Khaldis in the city of Mutsatsir, not very far from the present town of Rowanduz. The dimensions of the edifice were small, only 69 feet by 44 feet, measured at the foundations. But the walls were built of great blocks of hewn stone, and traces of a pavement in a kind of mosaic were found. The doors appear to have been of bronze. Outside the entrance stood a block of marble which was hollowed out and was probably used for sacrifices. At the time of my visit little was to be seen of this interesting structure, for the vandal townspeople had removed its masonry for building purposes. Large faced blocks, taken thence and perhaps from other edifices, were being rolled down the hillside. Only a fraction of the objects found was brought away by Messrs. Clayton and Rassam; their workmen abstracted the remainder, from whose hands some portions have filtered into Europe. Toprak Kala has quite recently (1898) been the scene of further excavations, this time on the part of Messrs. Belck and Lehmann. They have dug out the substructures of the temple to its foundations, cleared away the rubbish which obstructed a long subterraneous passage, debouching into a large chamber which may have served as a reservoir, and which was fed by an artificial duct deriving its water from a neighbouring spring; and discovered a wine-cellar containing colossal vats, some engraved with Vannic writing and one with a Persian cuneiform inscription. We also owe to their labours the discovery not far from the temple of a space which seems to have been set apart to receive the bones of the sacrificial animals and of the human beings, captives of war, who had been offered up to the god. They have acquired numerous objects, of silver as well as of bronze and iron, including weapons and ornaments of various kinds. But the principal service which they have rendered is the identification of Toprak Kala with the city of Rusas mentioned in the stele near Keshish GÖl on the slopes of Mount Varag. The inscription on that monument, if rightly deciphered, leaves little doubt that King Rusas, probably the first of that name, made use of that little lake as a partly natural and partly artificial reservoir, and conducted its waters along the foot of the Toprak Kala heights to the region occupied by the present site of the garden town. The earliest ruler mentioned on the shields is Rusas the Second; while we know from their contents that the temple was built or restored by Rusas the Third in honour of the god Khaldis. All the indications favour the assumption that in consequence of the depredations of Tiglath-Pileser the Third some change was made in the disposition of the city. The heights of Toprak Kala seem in some degree to have usurped the importance of the citadel, and to have been used as defences for the extension of the gardens in that direction.42

The culture of the Vannic kingdom was perhaps borrowed from the Assyrians and was certainly derived from the Mesopotamian plains. The legend of the passion of the queen of Assyria, the consort of the eponymous hero Ninus, for an Armenian king who suffers death at her hands and is restored to life,43 contains, so far as it expresses the intercourse of the pre-Armenian peoples, a considerable kernel of truth. Ara and Semiramis are none other than Tammuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth; and the advent from Assyria of the voluptuous queen in quest of a beautiful but reluctant lover may be connected with the introduction from abroad of the worship of Istar.44 However this may be, it is certain that the earliest inscriptions found at Van are in the Assyrian language and character; while those of the successors of Sarduris the First, although composed in the Vannic tongue, show but slight deviations from the cuneiform writing as practised at Nineveh. There is evidence to show that long after the disappearance of the empire of the Khaldians Assyrian influences lingered on in the land. I shall have occasion to remark these traces in the study of the architecture of the church at Akhtamar; and they compose a factor which should never be quite absent from the mind when examining the masterpieces of Armenian mediÆval art. The Vannic dynasty are not the symbol of resistance on the part of rude mountaineers to the approach of civilisation moving up from its immemorial seats. Far rather do they represent the beneficent spread of arts and letters over the Armenian plains. The favourite sites of their cities are not the recesses of the mountains of the tableland, but some small eminence from a wide extent of level and fertile ground, as typically embodied by the rock of Van and the mound of Armavir. They are builders of canals to irrigate the land, of roads to traverse even the scarcely passable ridges of the peripheral region, of bridges to span the great rivers. If we are still in the dark with respect to their ethnic affinities, we need harbour no doubts upon the character of the civilisation which they contributed to diffuse.

Like Adonis they have been carried down the stream of time, and over them the eddy has long since closed. The spade of the archÆologist reveals the charred remains of their later stronghold on the heights of Toprak Kala overlooking the gardens of Van. But by what people and at what date were they stricken to the ground, and their temples and palaces given to the flames? It is the disadvantage of a history which is derived from inscriptions, that issues as well as origins must remain obscure. I am not aware that any certain answer can be given to the first part of the question, and the date of the supreme catastrophe which must have overtaken the city can only be approximately fixed. The Vannic records differ in one important respect from those of Assyria; they do not contain a single date. The chronology is therefore dependent upon the mention in them of an Assyrian monarch or by the Assyrians of a contemporary ruler of Urardhu. The latest inscriptions hitherto discovered belonging to the northern kingdom are those of Rusas the Third, the son of Erimenas, who lived in the time of Ashur-bani-pal. But a successor of this prince is mentioned in the Assyrian annals as having sent an embassy to Nineveh about 644 B.C. His name is the familiar one of Sarduris, and he takes his place as the third king of that name. It would appear likely that at the time of his embassy he had only just begun to reign; and we should probably be justified in protracting the span covered by the Vannic dynasty at least as late as the death of Ashur-bani-pal (c. 626 B.C.). This date brings us down to the dawn of Oriental history as contained in the works of Greek writers. In the pages of Herodotus the Armenian tableland as well as Assyria form portions of the great empire of Darius (521–486 B.C.) and Xerxes (485–465 B.C.), which had succeeded the loose rule of the Scythians. And this new era has left behind it one of the most impressive of the monuments upon the rock of Van. On its southern face, in full view of the walled town at its base, is inscribed the trilingual record of the Persian conquest. “A great god is Ormazd, who is the greatest of gods, who has created this earth, who has created that heaven, who has created mankind, who has given happiness to man, who has made Xerxes king, sole king of many kings, sole lord of many. I am Xerxes the great king, the king of kings, the king of the provinces with many languages, the king of this great earth far and near, son of king Darius the AchÆmenian. Says Xerxes the king: Darius the king, my father, did many works through the protection of Ormazd, and on this hill he commanded to make his tablet and an image; yet an inscription he did not make. Afterwards I ordered this inscription to be written. May Ormazd, along with all the gods, protect me and my kingdom and my work.45

Years before this noble pronouncement was engraved in its imperishable arrowheads the empire of Assyria had come to an end. Nineveh was laid desolate in 606 B.C. by her Babylonian subjects assisted by the hordes of the Scythian king.46 Within a very brief period of the history of these countries ethnic changes on a vast scale had taken place. New nations had appeared upon the scene. The Cimmerian nomads, followed closely by the wild tribes of Scythia, had penetrated southwards from the countries on the north of Caucasus and swarmed over the settled lands. Ancient kingdoms tottered and fell into the human surge. It is just at this period that we come to hear of the Armenians. All the evidence points to the conclusion that they entered their historical seats from the west,47 as a branch of a considerable immigration of Indo-European peoples crossing the straits from Europe into Asia Minor and perhaps originally coming from homes in the steppes north of the Black Sea. Just as their kinsmen, invading Europe, drove the old races before them, such as the Etruscans, the Ligurians, and the Basques, so the Armenians seem to have filled the void which may have been created by the ravages of the Scythians and to have supplanted the subjects of the old Khaldian dynasty in the possession of the plains of the tableland.

That this revolution was not accomplished until at least as late as the fifth century before Christ may be gathered from the pages of Herodotus. The Armenians are known to this father of historians as inhabiting the mountainous country about the sources of the Halys and those of the Tigris, extending round towards the Mediterranean in the neighbourhood of Cilicia, their boundary on this side being the Euphrates.48 On the other hand the Khaldians or Urardhians have not already disappeared, although they have obviously declined to a subordinate position. They are mentioned under the name of Alarodians,49 and they are joined with the Matienians and Saspeires or Sapeires in the eighteenth satrapy of the Persian empire.50 Herodotus leaves us in the dark as to the exact localities in which they lived, although he indicates that the seats of the Saspeires lay to the south of the Kolchians, who inhabited the southern shore of the Black Sea in the neighbourhood of the Phasis.51 He informs us that Alarodians and Saspeires were both armed like the Kolchians, and the fact that the satrapies were organised with a view to ethnic affinities suggests the possibility that the two names first mentioned had come to be applied to one and the same race. Other considerations seem to point in the same direction. Down to a comparatively recent period we find a people called Chaldians (as written in the Greek character) or ChaldÆans occupying the mountains between Trebizond and Batum. There can be little doubt that they represented the remnants of the Vannic people, and they were almost certainly the same as the Alarodians of Herodotus and probably the same as the Saspeires, who have perhaps left their name to the present town of Ispir.52 When the Armenians had expelled the ancient inhabitants from the settled country we know from a most interesting chapter in the CyropÆdeia of Xenophon that the latter took refuge in the mountains. They fortified inaccessible peaks and lived by plunder, raiding down upon the plains.53 Our knowledge of the geography may at this point assist our historical investigations; and we may be reasonably sure that we shall find the relics of the dispossessed Khaldians inhabiting the fastnesses of the peripheral ranges which border Armenia upon the north and south.

That this was the case in the northern region is proved by the long survival of the name Chaldia (= Khaldia) among those inhospitable heights. Professor Lehmann has collected with a thoroughness of which his countrymen alone seem capable, a catalogue of passages in Greek and Byzantine writers making mention either of the Chaldian people or of the province to which they gave their name.54 That people are sometimes called ChaldÆans in classical authors. But that this was an error seems sufficiently proved by the name of the province—Chaldia; by the survival side by side of the variant form—Chaldians, and by the practice of Armenian writers to distinguish between the name of the tribe on their northern frontiers and that of the ChaldÆans. Chaldia with the capital Trebizond formed one of the military themes of the Byzantine empire; and I should like to add yet another reference to the lists of Professor Lehmann, this one taken from the travels of the Castilian ambassador, Don Ruy Gonzalez Clavigo, in the year 1404. Setting out from Trebizond on his way to Erzinjan, we find him travelling on the third day out through the snowy mountains of the province of Chaldia to the castle of Tzanich which stood on a crag; and on the morrow, in the evening, he arrives at the castle of the duke of Chaldia, where all caravans pay toll. The territory formed a part of the empire of the Grand Comneni; and the name has survived to the present day as that of a diocese of the Greek Church with the capital GÜmÜshkhaneh on the road from Trebizond to Baiburt.55

It is not so easy to trace the remnants of this ancient people in the southern zone of mountains. Their presence there is attested by the march of Xenophon with the relics of the Ten Thousand. A body of ChaldÆan or, more properly, of Chaldian mercenaries oppose his passage of the Bohtan branch of the Tigris.56 They are described as of independent spirit and warlike nature, and, like the Karduchi, the modern Kurds, as still maintaining their political freedom. One is tempted to enquire whether the present so-called ChaldÆan or Assyrian Christians, who are spread about the districts in the neighbourhood of Julamerik watered by the Great Zab, may not supply the necessary and missing link. But here we approach a thorny and difficult question, upon which the limitations of the present enquiry forbid us to touch.57 It will be better capable of discussion when some unanimity shall have been attained upon the origin and ethnic affinities of the subjects of the old Vannic kings. The ChaldÆan Christians are reputed to have fled into the mountains from Mesopotamia as late as the era of Timur. Baghdad and then Mosul would seem to have been the earlier seats of their patriarchate. The name ChaldÆan is not one which they apply to themselves, although they believe in their “Assyrian” origin. There is held by some scholars to be the widest etymological and original difference between the name of the people who were called after the god Khaldis and that of the Babylonian Chaldees or ChaldÆans. But the question of a possible racial or cultural link between them cannot at present be regarded as already negatived.58

Although the whole subject of the Vannic kingdom has scarcely yet arrived beyond its infantile stages, the knowledge already attained serves to throw quite a flood of light upon the early history of Armenia and of the Armenians. In a former chapter59 I had occasion to remark the obscurity of Armenian chronicles prior to the advent of their Arsakid dynasty. The people known as Armenians to Darius and to classical writers have always been accustomed to prefer the name of their reputed progenitor, Hayk, the son of Togarmah, great-grandson of Japhet. They call themselves the Hayk or children of Hayk. They believe that their ancestor emigrated from Babylon in a north-westerly direction and ultimately arrived upon the shores of Lake Van. They style the line of their primeval kings the Haykian dynasty, and they relate in a fabulous manner the early struggles of this dynasty with the Assyrian Power. Their historians admit that for this period they are destitute of native annals, and they deplore the illiterateness of their forefathers. It would almost seem as if they had presented us with a darkened and legendary account of the history of their predecessors, possibly mingled with the experiences of their own race. That the people of the Vannic kings were not Armenians is proved by the distinctive character of their language. That their empire continued to exist until at least as late as the latter half of the seventh century before Christ is a fact which is beyond doubt. Nothing which we might be inclined to attribute to the Armenians has been found at Toprak Kala. On the other hand, we may gather from Xenophon that after a period of mutual distrust the Armenians intermarried with the Khaldians whom they had dispossessed.60 To this extent they may inherit the blood of that ancient people which gave to Armenia a degree of civilisation which in many respects it has not been privileged since to enjoy.

The Armenians, like all capable and conquering races, borrowed much from the and attainments of the older inhabitants. Their most ancient cities—Van, Armavir, and perhaps Melazkert and Arjish—were foundations of the Vannic kings. The city of Hayk, as it has long been called, in the Hayotz-dzor, south-east of Van, has disclosed to the first essays of the modern archÆologist the familiar features of a Khaldian settlement.61 But Persian influences left upon them a more visible impression; and their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not the Khaldis of the Vannic texts but the Ormazd of the inscription of Xerxes, “who has created this earth, who has created that heaven, who has created mankind.”62

Sequence of the Vannic Kings.63

With the single exception of the remains of a mosque enriched with traceries and Arabic legends in a style worthy of the best traditions of Saracenic art, there remains no vestige in Van of any period of prosperity and splendour subsequent to the era of the pre-Armenian kings. It is true that the whole region is subject to seismic influences, and that many of the monuments of later ages may have succumbed through this cause. There exists a tradition that the isolation of the rock of Van itself is due to an earthquake in very ancient times, resulting in its severance from the heights adjacent on the east. Several visitations of considerable severity have probably occurred during the historical period; thus we learn that in the year 1648 of the Christian era one-half of the wall of the fortified city, as well as churches, mosques and private houses, were shattered by successive shocks and fell to the ground.67 But it is at least doubtful whether posterity has been deprived of many treasures by this agency or by the scourge of such a destroyer as Timur. Van must have occupied a subordinate position among the capitals of the AchÆmenian empire; and her ancient temples, together with the structures of her former magnificence, appear to have been demolished at a very early date. A restoration is ascribed to an Armenian king of the Haykian dynasty, who is said to have lived a little prior to the Asiatic conquests of Alexander the Great. But the very fact that this monarch is named Van, and is related to have rechristened the city of Semiramis after himself, invests the story with a fabulous character.68 Greater credit may be attached to the statement of Moses of Khorene that the place was rebuilt by the first ruler of the Armenian line of the Arsakid or Parthian kings.69 A colony of Jews, with the high priest of their nation, were settled in Van by one of his successors, the contemporary of King Mithridates of Pontus and his ally against the Roman Power.70 These Jewish captives appear to have prospered in their new seats; and about the middle of the fourth century of our era they are said to have numbered 18,000 families, who were again transported into captivity, this time into Persia, by the ruler of the new empire which had arisen in Asia, the Sasanian king Shapur.71 Neither Arsakids nor Sasanians appear to have laid much store by the city; and, indeed, the centres of political gravity in the Asiatic world had undergone a marked change since Assyrian times. The tableland of Persia had become incorporated into the imperial systems of Asia, giving ready access into the Armenian highlands. Europe had already appeared upon the changing scene of Oriental despotisms, and the real struggle was between the East and the West. When the Mohammedan empire of the caliphs had supplanted that of the Sasanian fire-worshippers, Persia and Armenia formed parts of the new structure. With the decay of the edifice it might appear that a fresh era had dawned for the Christian Armenians, supported on the west by their co-religionists of the Byzantine dominions, and capable of fortifying Van against the assaults of the Arabs operating from Baghdad and the lowlands in the south. In such circumstances was born the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan, which flourished for awhile during the Middle Ages, and of which this city was the capital. We have already glanced at its history while pursuing the annals of its contemporary at Ani, and have had to deplore the lack of cohesion among the Armenians at that period, which precluded them from playing a part of first-rate importance in the world movements of the time. We have seen the kinglets of Van bowing the head to the Seljuk invasion and creeping for safety into the bosom of the Byzantine empire.72 Perhaps we have not overlooked the picturesque interest of the pact they concluded, under which the heirs of the Romans took over the city of Sarduris and Menuas as an outpost of the civilised world. After the Byzantines had been carried away by the storm of barbarism the annals of Van, in so far as it is possible to follow them, are of scarcely more than local interest. The place must have settled down to that long spell of half-conscious existence under which it sleeps and heaves and moans at the present day. Its garrison of Turkomans offered a prolonged resistance to the armies of Timur; and, if the citadel was indeed virgin after the lapse of ages, to the savage Tartar belongs the boast of having torn her defences away. When Van was visited by a European traveller at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the Persian Shahs of the Safavid dynasty were in nominal ownership and a Kurdish chieftain in real possession of the fortress. This individual went so far as to coin money with his own stamp; but he was ejected after a prolonged siege by the general of Shah Ismail the First (A.D. 1502–24) and the inhabitants brought over to Persian allegiance.73 In the year 1534 the keys of the city were brought to the vizier of the Ottoman sultan, Suleyman the First.74 The Ottoman Turks thus became masters of a fortress on the side of Persia which they converted into one of the strongest places in their empire. In the seventeenth century it is said to have fallen to Shah Abbas I.,75 but it was recovered by the Turks. Their rule has perpetuated the abuses of the Kurds; and in the forties of the nineteenth century Van was again in the tender keeping of a rebellious chief of that turbulent people, Khan Mahmud.

In spite of all these revolutions the Armenian people still maintain themselves in large numerical preponderance in the city and neighbourhood of Van. It was about the shores of this lake that, according to their traditions, their ancestor, Hayk, established some of their earliest seats. For at least 2500 years they have kept their hold upon them, and have become accustomed and inured to see the empires come and pass, reaping their harvest of tears from the Armenian peasantry. Since the impressions which I am about to record were committed to paper a fresh massacre has decimated their community. And now, as I put them together, comes a piteous appeal from the American missionaries, despairing of preserving the lives of the famished survivors who have lost their livelihood, but begging for help on behalf of their crowded orphanages. The perspective of history helps to correct the sentiment of blank despondency engendered by the contemporary condition of the Armenian inhabitants. At the time of my visit they numbered two-thirds of the population of the town and gardens of Van. This proportion has no doubt been reduced by recent events; but it is almost equally certain to be redressed. The fecundity of this people is not less remarkable than their persistency; and their presence is needed by the officials who exploit the land. It would seem that the Armenian inhabitants of Van have been increasing during the present century. There can be little doubt that the proportion which their numbers bear to those of the Mussulmans has been tending to become greater. Consul Brant records that in the year 1838 Van contained not less than 7000 families, of which only 2000 are ascribed by him to the Armenians.76 This estimate represents a population of about 35,000 souls, of whom 25,000 would be Mussulmans and 10,000 Armenians. The total agrees approximately with the most reliable statistics which I was able to obtain. At the time of my visit the town, including the gardens, was believed to be inhabited by 30,000 people; but the Mussulmans numbered only 10,000 to the 20,000 of the Armenians. I received the impression that these figures were correct in respect of the proportion of the Armenian and the Mussulman element. In the aggregate they appeared to be a little too low. If we include the population of the caza or neighbourhood of Van, we shall probably not err much in arriving at a total of at least 64,000, made up of 47,000 Armenians and 17,000 Mussulmans. Consul Taylor in 1868 reckoned the inhabitants “of Van and the neighbourhood,” by which he would appear to mean of the town and caza, at 17,000 Mussulmans and 42,000 Christians. For Christians one might almost write Armenians.77

When one contemplates the vast extent of the garden suburbs and the closely-packed quarters of the walled town, it is difficult to believe that not more than 30,000 people inhabit so imposing a place. Let my reader refer to the plan which accompanies this chapter. I based it originally on one published in the fine book of M. MÜller-Simonis,78 and I filled it in during my daily rides. It at once enables me to dispense with a tedious topographical narrative, and serves to show the distribution of Armenians and Mussulmans. On the left of the paper is represented the rock of Van with the cuneiform inscriptions and the city or fortified town at its southern base. On the right extends the hill ridge of Toprak Kala, commencing on the west with the bold crag of Ak KÖpri, and making a bay towards the gardens as it stretches in an easterly direction, presenting the side of what is actually a nearly meridional mass. Between the two lies the plain—a bower of leafy gardens, most dense along a line drawn south of Ak KÖpri, but continuing westwards from the southerly outskirts of those thickly-planted quarters to the district of Shamiram or Semiramis, south of the citadel. Mussulmans and Armenians are distributed over the area of these suburbs, and they share between them the population of the walled town. Some quarters in the gardens are peopled exclusively by Armenians, some by Mussulmans, and some by both alike. The names which I have placed upon the plan are in some cases those of quarters, and in others of blocks of houses and enclosures. The citadel or rock of Van is occupied by the garrison alone, and none of the townsmen are permitted to ascend that delicious platform.

The tall poplars and luxuriant undergrowth hide the houses of the suburbs as you approach Van from the plain in the south. But penetrate within the foliage and you will find clusters of habitations which grow in frequency and importance as the central avenue is reached. Along that well-trodden thoroughfare—filled at morning or in the evening by a stream of pedestrians and riders, wearing the fez and more rarely the turban, some in flowing Oriental robes, others attired in European dress—a number of stately residences abut on the road with their gardens around them, and dissemble the squalor which for the most part reigns within. Extremely picturesque are some of these lofty houses, with verandahs disposed in various and fanciful manners, as may be seen in my illustration of the dwelling of a wealthy Armenian inside the precincts of the walled city (Fig. 127). The fact that a large number of the inhabitants of the garden town proceed daily to their different places of business in the city partly accounts for the paradoxical smallness of the population, which ebbs and flows between the two. Here in the gardens are the private residences of the Vali or Governor of Van and of the principal officials. Most of the rich Armenian merchants have their dwellings among these quarters, where are also situated the various European Consulates. It is here that are housed the principal schools, and are located the most considerable of the churches. It is therefore scarcely correct to speak of the garden town as a suburb; far rather does it bear to the narrow and crowded streets at the base of the citadel a relation analogous to that of the West End of London towards the City and the Strand.

Among these groves we spent a pleasant and fairly restful fortnight, housed in the empty apartments of the British Consulate near the cross-roads of Khach-poghan. There, in the great room containing the safe, and the scroll enumerating the consular fees payable by the only two subjects of Her Britannic Majesty who, besides the Consul, are resident at Van, my companions erected their camp beds. Mine was placed in a little chamber on the further side of the spacious landing, which was open to the air. Here I could receive visits and read and write. My windows, paned with glass, looked out upon a sylvan scene of fairy-like character. All this verdure is produced by irrigation; and it is the peculiar quality of such artificial sustenance that plants and trees preserve the perfection which in northern latitudes can only be admired in a conservatory. The storm clouds, dissolving in rain, do not disturb this southern climate and play havoc with the leaves. Moss and mildew are unknown beneath this dry, continental atmosphere and the rays of this brilliant sun. The air is saturated with light, streaming from a heaven which is always blue. Into the liquid canopy start the needle forms of the poplars, forced from the soaking earth with wand-like stems. Apples and peaches and pomegranates—all the hardier fruits which can withstand cold winters—attain a beauty of form and an excellence of flavour which would do credit to better gardeners. Here at Van they grow much as they please. Melons and cucumbers find just the conditions under which they thrive. All this pulsing and exuberance extends unchecked through the long summer; and when the autumn is at length at hand, towards the end of October, the change is only marked by the gradual passing over of shades of green into shades of gold. The leaves remain on their branches until the withered stalks can hold no longer; but of violence there is rarely a trace. The sky becomes black and rumbles; some showers fall, and Sipan is clothed in white to his lower slopes. But the passing darkness of the day only enhances the goldness of a foliage which awaits the first coming of the snows. Such were the phases of the year, which, towards the middle of November, were silently being accomplished before our windows.

These cross-roads, Khach-poghan, are situated almost in the centre of the most thickly-populated districts of the garden town. On the whole it is a painful impression which one receives from daily intercourse with one’s fellow-creatures at Van. The salient feature of the situation is the war between two opposite elements—the one of restless energy, measured almost by a European standard; the other passive, suspicious, fitfully aflame. Neither is endowed with the capacity of government; and the least numerous and least capable rule. The Armenian subject majority spend lives which are certainly laborious and create whatever wealth the city possesses. The Mussulman dominant minority grow fat in the mostly highly-paid sinecures, or employ the most keen-witted among the Christians to devise ingenious schemes for robbing the public or the public funds. Over all presides an imported official of little ability and no education; and a few troops, under the orders of an independent commander, who is a centre for intrigue, redress the balance in favour of the least enlightened and most corrupt.

Things are in the habit of going on in this haphazard manner, jolting and creaking along. But within the last decade or two a new spirit has been born, which my reader knows under the name of the Armenian movement. Here at Van, no less than elsewhere, it has been a clumsy birth, as might be expected from its parentage. It springs from the two elements above indicated, and flourishes most in the circumstances described. In its ultimate origin it is at once a product of economical conditions and a reflection of the spirit of the times. It causes the old elements to ferment beyond recognition and to assume the most incongruous shapes.

The phenomenon is most remarkable in the case of the Turks. One may remark, by way of parenthesis, that there does not appear to be any evidence of an actual settlement of Turks in Van or the neighbourhood. Among the Mussulman inhabitants of the town about six families or clans, comprising each on the average some fifty persons, may be classed as of Turkish descent. Of these the most prominent are the Timur Oglu; then the Jamusji Oglu, or sons of the buffalo driver, and the Topchi Oglu, or sons of the artilleryman. From their ranks was formed a kind of oligarchy, which ruled the city in former times, and, as was natural, developed a fine taste for faction and had its counterparts of Guelphs and Ghibellines. The passion for intrigue has survived among them longer than the ability to indulge it in methods of their own choosing. Their power has been much curtailed by the progressive centralisation of all government at Constantinople. But they still maintain their hold upon much of the machinery of the administration, filling the offices which are not under the direct patronage of the imperial authorities, such as the presidencies of the municipality, the administrative council, and the judicial courts. With the exception of these families there are very few real Turks in Van; and in the country districts the Mussulman population are probably for the most part of Kurdish origin. They speak both Turkish and Kurdish. The more peaceable among them, who are accustomed to settled pursuits, disown the name of Kurds and affect that of Osmanli, or Turks of the ruling race. They do not belong to any Kurdish tribe. Their sympathies are on the whole on the side of law and order; and their aversion to the turbulence of the tribal Kurds counteracts and perhaps outweighs their jealousy of their Christian neighbours.

An enlightened Government would seize upon these points of union and forge from them strong links to connect society in defence of common interests against the excesses of the Kurds. Van is situated upon the threshold of the Kurdish mountains, close to the immemorial strongholds of Kurdish chieftains, whence they descend with their motley followers into the plains. No sooner had the centralising tendencies in the Ottoman Empire come near to establishing upon a permanent basis the unquestioned supremacy of Ottoman rule in these remote districts, than the Armenian movement commenced to make itself felt. The truth is that those tendencies were of impure origin. The officials at Constantinople were concerned with nothing less than the extension of good government. But they were clever enough to perceive that such modern inventions, as, for instance, the telegraph, gave them the means of controlling for their own purposes distant territories which in former times had been left more or less to themselves. The telegraph substituted the authority of a clique in the Palace at Constantinople for the rough-and-ready but often honest and, on the whole, well-meaning methods of a Turkish pasha of the old school. It is quite possible that the good old pashas would have brought about the ruin of the country, which, indeed, was in effect ruined long before they appeared on the scene. But things might have gone on longer; their rule could not have cost one quarter the existing misery; and the travelled person would at least have preferred spending his life in their shadow than within reach of the wings of the eagle of Russia and the quills of her bureaucrats.

From one cause or another the whole character of Mussulman government has undergone a marked change within recent years. It is scarcely possible to recognise in the ruling circles of such a city as Van the Turkey of our fathers. Fear and suspicion are written upon every face. These passions are transmitted to the rank and file of their co-religionists; the air is full of rumours of Armenian plots. In the old days there would have been a riot and quite possibly a massacre; and everything would settle down. At present a swarm of spies, under the direction of emissaries from the Palace, keep the old sores open and daily discover new opportunities for inflicting wounds. All the vices of the Russian bureaucracy have been copied by willing disciples in the capital, and sent down to the provinces to serve as a model. One may assert without exaggeration that life is quite intolerable for an inhabitant of this paradise of Van.

The spies smell out a so-called plot and denounce its authors to the Governor, who, poor man, is tired to death with their reports. If he fail to follow it up, he is accused at Constantinople, and runs the risk of losing his post. If he interfere, his action may quite well lead to bloodshed at a time when his efforts at pacification were commencing to bear fruit. I gathered that a certain Vali of Bitlis had discovered a working solution of the difficulty. His principle was to go one better than the informers, and himself to organise a huge plot against himself. When this sedition had been quelled by his soldiers just at the time that suited him best, his zeal would be rewarded by the despatch of a decoration from the Palace, and he would be left in peace for some time.

Of course the power of the Kurds is daily on the increase in such circumstances as these. The Palace leans towards them; their petty leaders are taken to the capital and invested with high orders. The wretched puppet of a Governor does not dare to overawe them, as even his slender resources would well enable him to do. On the other hand, the former docile, cringing spirit of the Armenians has given place to a different temper. Partly they are goaded by the spies into so-called rebellion; and, in part, they have been aroused to a consciousness of their own real miseries by the persecution of the most respected of their clerical leaders and by the spread of education.

The Armenian movement has had the effect of resolving their community at Van into two distinct parties. The one is animated by the spirit of the present Katholikos, His Holiness Mekertich Khrimean. The memory of his noble life, spent so largely among them, outlives his long absence from their midst. The evidence of his work and example is spread over the city, and may readily be recognised in the demeanour of those who have shared his thoughts and aims. His last period of residence in this, his native place, would appear to have come to an end in 1885. At that time he was bishop of Van as well as abbot of Varag. His labours were directed to the education of his countrymen; “educate, educate”—the girls no less than the boys—may be said to have been his watchword. His personal influence and the power of the pulpit, when occupied by such a preacher, were thrown into the endeavour to awake those dormant feelings which few human beings, however much their spirit may have been broken, are entirely without. To realise their manhood, and what they owed to themselves and their race was the constant exhortation which ran through his sermons and penetrated to the inmost selves of his flock. Schools sprang up in abundance beneath the magic of his individuality, and teachers were imbued with that enthusiasm for their high calling without which their profession savours of drudgery and tends to produce a similar impression upon their pupils. But the spirit of truth is too often akin to the spirit of revolution, and there are bonds from without as well as from within. When the scales fell from the eyes of this downtrodden people, the naked ugliness of their lot as helots was revealed. Their native energies were transferred from the domain of money-making to that of social improvement and political emancipation. The craft of their minds, abnormally quickened by the long habit of oblique methods, exchanged the sphere of commerce for that of politics. What wonder if they infused their politics with a character at which your superior European would sometimes frown and more often smile? He has been trained by a long spell of comparatively pure government; while the Armenians have been a subject race for over nine centuries, are honeycombed with the little vices inherent in such a status, and are quite unused and as yet unfit to govern themselves.

So the old Armenian nature underwent and is still experiencing a process of fermentation and change. At the same time it threw off some of the characteristics which had been hitherto among the most pronounced. Rashness and contempt for calculation took the place of the old qualities of servility and time-serving. In the domain of the community these discarded qualities were represented by individuals and by a party. The watchword of this party has been submission to the powers that are, and the solid argument which underlies the counsels of those who inspire it is based upon the apparent hopelessness of resistance and the tragic failures which such resistance has already involved. But the sympathy of the impartial spectator can scarcely be enlisted on their side, even if his judgment incline to their views. They are not the new Armenians, chastened by sorrow and sobered by reflection, but, for the most part, the very dregs of the old. Their leader in Van is the bishop of Lim, commonly known as Bishop Poghos. This prelate has long been resident in the city. His talents have been employed to counteract the influence of the present Katholikos; and he has stood at the head of his opponents. When Khrimean departed from his see he named Bishop Poghos his vekil or deputy, it would seem in the hope of promoting peace. But the inhabitants do not appear to have favoured this solution, and the bishop has not held the office for the last several years. He did me the honour of coming to see me—a man of great bulk of body and in advanced years. His features are of the blunt order characteristic of so many Armenians; and one might doubt whether he could ever have understood the personality of such a man as Khrimean.

Such, perhaps, is not an unfair analysis of society at Van and of the transformation which the principal elements have been undergoing. Several massacres of the Armenians have done less to exasperate them than the importation of Russian methods into their daily life. The place swarms with secret police. Should a Mussulman harbour a grudge against an Armenian, he endeavours to excite the suspicions of one of these agents; the house is entered and searched from roof to cellar. Perhaps some harmless effusion of patriotic sentiment is found in the desk of a son of the house, a student. The poem is seized and the youth thrown into prison. Arms are said to be concealed, and a pistol may be discovered. The whole family is at once rendered suspect. One might multiply these instances almost to any extent; but my object is not to excite resentment against the Turkish authorities, only to show the folly of their procedure. If they would only return to their old traditions and try to govern less, the situation would be immensely improved.

I feel sure that such counsel would be appreciated and even tendered by the Pasha if he were consulted by those from whom he takes his orders. But it would have been in doubtful taste to speak one’s mind out to him, the intercourse between us having been confined to the courtesy of an exchange of visits. Nor was he the man to enter usefully into a discussion of the subject. He had come to Van in the pursuit of his profession of Governor some twenty months ago. A Mussulman Georgian of good family, whose ancestral estates lie in Russian territory, not far from the coast of the Black Sea, he could probably lay better claim to a preference for straight over crooked dealing than to any of the more special qualities of a statesman. The Mohammedans who emigrate from the Russian provinces into the dominions of the Sultan are most often those who are unable to sustain competition with stronger elements, given fuller economical play under Russian rule. The Vali of Van, notwithstanding his name and a certain dignity of presence, could scarcely hope to occupy a position of equal importance in the empire of the Tsar. I found in him a man of little or no education, about fifty years of age. Tall and of large frame, his features were almost handsome, except, perhaps, the mouth. He habitually wore a smile upon his face. There he would sit in his long, bare room from morning until evening, sipping coffee with his visitors and puffing cigarettes. He appeared to encounter all kinds of difficulties in the vicarious management of his property in Russia; but one could not doubt that the comely beard would grow white in the Turkish service, and the groves of Kolchis know him no more.

We spoke of the Kurds and of the redoubtable Hamidiyeh regiments, of which, he assured me, no less than twenty had been instituted in his vilayet, including the mountainous region of Hakkiari. He stated that their horses had already been branded, and that the prescribed strength of each regiment was from 600 to 700 men. Passing from this magnificent topic to the sphere of prose and of reality, he lamented the want of communications in the country, ascribing most of the troubles of the time to this cause. But when I enquired whether it would be permissible to organise a service of transport on the lake, bringing out a steamer or two and the necessary craft, he replied, as I expected, that one must apply at Constantinople, and that he had no authority to sanction the possession even of a pleasure launch. He had himself embarked upon the enterprise of constructing a road to Bitlis along the southern shore of the lake. But it did not appear to have yet got further than the village of Artemid, less than a half day’s stage. The Vali called my attention to the peculiar hardness of the walls in Van, although built of nothing better than mud. They remain intact for years and years. He also sang the praises of a coal mine, a short way distant, which he hoped would be exploited some day.

Commerce and industry find in the Armenian population of Van a soil in which they would flourish to imposing proportions under better circumstances. The city is not situated upon any artery of through traffic, and a trade with the Russian provinces can scarcely be said to exist. The imports from abroad are carried in bullock carts or on the backs of pack horses by stages of almost endless number. Perhaps the bulk of them are derived from the port of Trebizond, travelling through Erzerum. From that provincial capital there are two main tracks, the one, which is used in summer, by way of Tekman or the plain of Pasin, passing through Kulli and Melazkert; the other, frequented in winter, making the detour along the plain of Alashkert and crossing the Murad at Tutakh. The journey from that township is not without danger as far as Akantz on Lake Van. The caravans are accompanied by armed men, and are constantly on the alert against attack by bands of Kurds. Communications with Persia are conducted principally through the town of Kotur, and, more rarely, through Bashkala. On the south the territory of Van is separated by almost impenetrable mountains from the lowlands of Mesopotamia. But some cotton goods find their way up from the Mediterranean and through Aleppo and Diarbekr along the passage of Bitlis and the southern shore of the lake. I was informed of a more direct route which, after leaving Bashkala, passes by way of Gever, Shemzinar (Shemdinan?) and Rowanduz to Erbil and so to Baghdad. But it was represented as encountering considerable natural difficulties between Shemzinar and Rowanduz.

Native industries, such as the production of various kinds of textiles, as well as a number of small handicrafts, are necessarily confined within very humble limits, owing to the poverty of the country. Wages are low, and the price of bread is apt to become high under a system of commercial rings which involves the Government officials in the artificial production of a famine. At the time of my visit wheat stood at an almost prohibitive figure; yet large quantities of the cereal were reputed to be stored, and no additional supplies were encouraged to come in. Many of my readers will be familiar with the circular wafers, resembling pancakes, which take the place of our loaves of bread throughout the East. Never very palatable, as I think, they are really unwholesome, besides being nasty, in the paradise of Van. They appeared to be compounded of a gritty mud with an admixture of dough. We endeavoured in vain to procure some white bread; the bakeries were said to be forbidden to supply such a luxury to any but the Vali’s table. The wretched bakers are a class subject to constant persecution; the officials have the right and even the duty of inspection; and this is tantamount to asserting that the bread is sure to be bad and its producers at their wits’ end to squeeze from the staple the necessary bribes.

Corruption has wormed its way into every department of the administration. I enquired of a prominent citizen, who impressed me as a man of parts, and to whose house I was obliged to wade through mud which lay ankle deep upon the central avenue of the garden town, whether a municipality were an institution unknown to Van. He replied that, on the contrary, they possessed an elaborate machinery for the regulation of municipal affairs. Were Christians excluded from the body?—By no manner of means.—Then what prevented him and those of equal calibre with him from attending to such important affairs? The answer came that those Armenians who served upon the Board were mere robbers or abettors of robbery. No honest man with a reputation to lose could consent to co-operate; should he make the endeavour he would rapidly be edged out. Such is the manner in which the paper reforms which tickle Europe are in practice transferred to the category of grave abuses.

There must exist a trace of light in every gloomy picture; and at Van the ray falls upon a little band of artisans and craftsmen as well as upon a few of the tradesmen and merchants. These elect are without exception Armenians. Our money matters were adjusted with a promptitude and a spirit of honesty which revealed capacities that came as a surprise after our experiences in Russian territory. Yet there is here no bank in the proper sense of the term. We were in want of warm overcoats, and gave a light cape as a model; it was repeated in a thick cloth imported from European Turkey with a skill which would not disgrace a West-End tailor. My Van coat has since that day been my constant companion; no wet has ever penetrated the coarse but cunning texture, and not a stitch has given way. Work in metal is produced with a sleight of hand and sureness of eye which are nothing less than extraordinary. The jewellers bring you objects which, although fanciful rather than artistic, are little wonders in their way. And from the background of such brighter memories shine the eyes of the great Van cats—as large as terriers, with magnificent tails and long fur, with the gait and fearlessness of dogs.

If you could only forget the shadows or wipe them away like a picture-restorer, there would not be absent other elements of light and hope. But a very long vision would be necessary for their discernment, and senses in other respects keen. For one thing—in spite of the spies, and all the miserable stories of Armenian brides carried off by Kurds who go scot-free—a larger atmosphere seems to surround the immediate political environment, disclosing vistas into freedom. There is none of that feeling of quite irremovable pressure, which in the Russian provinces is already sealing the springs of human activity as a noxious climate sits upon the lungs. Freaks there are, and wicked freaks on the part of Government; nor does there exist any security for life and property. Officials and public bodies are woefully ignorant and hopelessly corrupt. In spite of these real miseries I should not hesitate to consent to endure them, were the alternative the lot of an Armenian in Russia. But this is, perhaps, a purely personal impression which I need not expect my readers to share.

Some acquaintance with the outside world is derived by the citizens as a result of the immemorial custom among the male Armenian inhabitants of migrating for a number of years to Constantinople and returning home when they have amassed a certain competence. Married men leave their families behind. Visits from Europeans are naturally few and far between; but two or three political consuls are generally in residence, and there is a fairly numerous American Mission. The Americans are under the protection of the British Consul; and it is pleasant to recognise these two elements working silently and unseen together in the van of humanity and civilisation. The British Consul deserves a special measure of esteem and sympathy. He fights the same battles as the devoted missionaries; but he has no public, however much limited, to applaud his efforts and stimulate him with their enthusiasm upon his return home. He corresponds with an Ambassador entirely ignorant of the local conditions; his reports moulder in the pigeon-holes of an impalpable Foreign Office; and the least show of zeal is often rewarded by one of those snubs which your British official, and especially the younger diplomatists, have a natural talent for inflicting. The quality lacking to the average Englishman of a heart permeating manners is possessed in a marked degree by the Americans. Their Mission on the extreme eastern outskirts of the garden town is an oasis of human kindliness and light and love. It was presided over by Mr. Greene, assisted by Mr. Allen and by Dr. Raynolds, who was on leave of absence at the time of our visit. The lady workers included Dr. Grace Kimball, with a large medical practice, and Miss Fraser, a young and charming Canadian lady, who was at the head of a staff of Armenian teachers in the school for girls attached to the institution. In their society it was my privilege to spend several pleasant and profitable evenings, making drafts upon the varied experiences of Dr. Kimball, and realising what a blank is presented by social life in Mussulman countries, where freedom of intercourse with women would be regarded as a crime and where cultured women in the true sense are almost unknown.

I received abundant testimony to the morality of Armenian women, even under circumstances which may be regarded as distinctly unfair. Although husbands leave their brides behind when they migrate to Constantinople, infidelity is uncommon. Were it otherwise, the fact could scarcely escape the observation of a lady practitioner. It often happens that a widow, about to marry again, will bring her young child to the feet of the missionaries, beseeching them to bring it up and educate it in her place, as their monument—for so she puts it—before God. But it never occurs that they are offered illegitimate offspring. For this reason, if for no other, they are disinclined to believe the aspersions which are usually cast by the authorities upon the character of Armenian women abducted by the Kurds. A less bright side of the Armenian character was, they said, their inveterate treachery towards members of their own race. In this respect, as well as in the domain of personal chastity, there appears to exist a rough analogy between the Armenians and the Celtic population of Ireland. But one must be careful not to press the resemblance too closely, the two peoples being fundamentally unlike.

The gruesome stories, which we find it difficult to credit in Europe, of the miseries endured by the inmates of Turkish prisons were abundantly confirmed upon unimpeachable evidence. The most ordinary sanitary precautions are neglected, until the cells attain an unspeakable condition. Mussulmans are often able to obtain certain relaxations in the rigidity of their confinement. They plead that it is impossible for them to worship Allah upon floors which are in this state. Perhaps they will be accorded permission to emerge for a time into the open air. Christians are seldom favoured with similar indulgences; and it often happens that an unhappy youth, immured upon mere suspicion, will be sent home in a dying condition, suffering from poisoning of the blood.

The American Mission at Van is only one of the many establishments which have been spread over the face of Asiatic Turkey by the pious enterprise of the Protestant inhabitants of the New World. It is an established etiquette between the various Societies of the same faith, although not necessarily of the same nation, to avoid overlapping into one another’s spheres; and from an early date in the present century the Americans entered this field and made it their own, working their way into Asia Minor and thence into Mesopotamia. Their Society is supported by the Congregational Church of America; and this particular Mission was founded as late as 1871. Their activities are practically confined to the Armenian population professing the Gregorian religion. But I understand that the making of proselytes is no special or paramount object of the teaching which they dispense. If, perchance, these lines should reach an American public, I would venture to entreat the supporters of the Mission to emphasise rather than to check this wholesome spirit of abnegation among the devoted men and women who serve their interests so well. The Church is at the present day the only stable institution which the Armenian people possess. No Armenian of education—whether priest or layman—doubts that it is in need of reform. Reform will come from within as the result of the growing enlightenment which the Church herself is engaged in propagating under extraordinary difficulties among her scattered communities. To wean her children from her, while she is still in the stress of a noble purpose, would be to promote that cruel spirit which lurks in all religions when they are assailed in their instincts of maternity from without. Such an endeavour would be at once in a high degree impolitic, and alien to the highest principles of Christianity—mutual tolerance, humility, love.

The circumstances are not the same as when Luther reared the standard of rebellion; nor are Americans sons of the Armenian Church. Their true mission is to compose rather than to accentuate the internal differences which the strong wine of their personality can scarcely fail to elicit among the congregations with whom they are brought in touch. The Armenians are scarcely less Protestant than themselves in their attitude towards the Church of Rome. I should hesitate to expound such arguments in a manner so didactic were I not convinced that they are recognised in their full force by the thinking minds who influence the aims of the Mission. Throughout the extensive field which is worked from this centre only seventy-five adults have been received into the Protestant Church. But the standard of wholesome living has been incalculably raised both in the material and in the moral sphere. The sick receive skilled treatment; schools are opened in the most needy villages; the alms of Europe, as well as of America, are distributed among the necessitous poor. The effect of a massacre is somewhat softened by the institution of numerous orphanages. Such are some of the results of over twenty years of labour, upon which the Society may look back with unmixed pride. In the eyes of the traveller they are likely to outvalue the long roll of converts which some of the constituents of the Mission might desire to possess. There is always a certain element of selfishness in proselytism which is peculiarly repugnant to the ordinary visitor to distant lands.

The healthy absence or subordination of such an element among the Americans has contributed in no small measure to their success. The missionaries live on good terms with the Armenian clergy, and are sometimes invited to preach in their churches. They are loud in their praise of the tolerance of the Armenian hierarchy. They assured me that no attempt is made in their schools to convert the pupils from their ancestral religion. An early opportunity was afforded me of visiting these schools. They are two in number, one in the gardens and the other in the walled city. To both are attached companion institutions for girls. The school in the gardens was attended by 110 boys and 115 girls. That in the city had only a third of this number. The better-to-do among the people pay a small yearly fee, ranging, according to the standard of education which they may be receiving, from 15 to 60 piastres.79 The highest class are expected to pay the last-named sum. Boys enter the school at seven years of age, and some remain as late as their sixteenth year or even into their eighteenth. The course consists of primary, intermediary and high-school classes; and to each class it would be usual to devote three years. The curriculum of the highest class consists of English and French among foreign languages, algebra and geometry in the domain of mathematics, and physics and physiology in that of natural science. History is taught under certain drawbacks. I saw a copy of Xenophon’s Anabasis which had been abstracted from the trunk of a teacher, and in which the name of Armenia had been erased with a penknife from the map!

Indeed, one of the greatest difficulties under which they labour within recent years consists in the enforced mimicry of Russian methods by the little Turkish officials. Their books are stopped on the road or sent back. Restrictions are placed upon the choice of books; and both Milton and Shakespeare are suspect. The Bible comes through; and a very handsome Bible it is, printed by the Society in modern Armenian. They sell it for a small sum. The Armenian clergy prefer the old, classical Bible, which, however, few of their flock quite understand. The enterprise of the missionaries has also produced a Testament in the Kurdish language, which they dispense to those Armenians living in the recesses of the peripheral region who have forgotten their native tongue.

Mr. Greene was of opinion that the sons of parents who possess some education are not inferior in natural abilities to the average American boy. In the English class I listened to some very fair reading, certainly as good as in the Russian seminary at Erivan. Some very practical theses were expounded; why, for instance, should one sleep in a bed and not on the floor? For four reasons: a floor is cold, dirt collects upon the floor, gases hang to the floor, damp affects the floor. There can be little doubt that the Armenian schools are greatly benefited by competition with the less fashionable American institutions. They at least receive a certain stimulus and some new ideas. This is notably the case in respect of their schools for girls, which owe their development to the American example.

The ecclesiastical schools are housed in buildings adjoining the several churches to which they are attached. But they do not necessarily bear the same name as the church. Coming from Russia, it is curious to hear the loud grumblings which are called forth among the Armenians by their obligation to pay to Government a tax of two per cent upon their incomes towards the expenses of education. Government pockets the money but fails to provide a Christian school. In Russia they do not complain of the imposition of the corresponding tax, but would be eager to throw away at least double the amount in consideration of being permitted to retain and develop their own unassisted schools. What the Armenians would desire above all things both in Russia and in Turkey is the refund by Government under certain conditions of the tax levied upon them for education. Taking into account the efficiency of their schools, the purely political nature of the opposition they encounter, and all the peculiar circumstances of the case, one is inclined to come to the conclusion that both Empires would be well advised to accede to the wishes of their Armenian subjects upon this point. At least those wishes are likely to enlist the sympathies of impartial men.

Except for the protection which is afforded in their relations with Government by the close connection with the ecclesiastical organisation, the Armenian schools display a detachment from hierarchical influences which no friend of true education can fail to admire. The teachers are almost without exception laymen; and knowledge is allowed to pursue its own salvation. Formerly there existed in Van an institution for preparing teachers; but it was closed by Government for political reasons some years ago. Its place might probably be taken by the Sanasarean college at Erzerum; yet I only met one master who had been equipped by that wealthy foundation, and the fact deserves remark. The rest had been chosen from the ranks of the best-educated citizens; and, in the absence of any other but a commercial career for young men thus qualified, the teaching staff attracts a fairly high class. No limits are placed by Government upon the standard of instruction—the sentence sounds strange; and one requires to have come from Russia to appreciate the magnanimity of the concession. But Russian methods have crept in within recent years, and the private schools have already been regulated. In all schools gymnastics are rigidly prohibited, on the ground that the boys might be drilled and might rebel! Such puerilities are balanced on the other side by the comparative latitude which on the whole the schools enjoy.

Text-books, translated or compiled from European sources, are supplied by the printing presses of the Mekhitarist order in Venice and Vienna. I enquired why the Bible had not been issued in modern Armenian by the organisers of the Church schools. The reply came that the difference between the ancient and modern tongues was not so great as between Latin and Italian; and that it was desirable that Armenians should be familiar with their best literature, written in the same classical speech. The curriculum comprises, besides the Armenian language, religion and literature, a fairly thorough study of the Turkish tongue, both written and spoken. French is also taught; and two of the masters at Yisusean conversed in fluent French. The natural science course includes astronomy and physical geography; while mathematics, anatomy, geography and general history figure in the routine of one or other of the grades. Leaving out of account the primary course, most of the schools have a higher as well as an intermediary grade. In both a pupil remains some three to four years. He might complete the course in about his sixteenth year. But the majority are much too poor to be able to remain more than half this term; and in the school of Arakh, the largest in Van, I counted only sixteen youths attending classes in the highest grade. Only five were in the last year. About one-half were competent to contribute a small payment, the highest sum being a couple of mejidiehs or 40 piastres a year.

The oldest of these schools are Yisusean and Arakh, both founded nearly fifty years ago. The latter may perhaps serve as a typical example of the scholastic institutions attached to the churches. Its proper name is the somewhat cacophonous one of Thargmanchatz, or the school of the translators—Sahak, Mesrop and their companions. It is situated in the Arakh quarter of the gardens and in the same enclosure with the church. You are shown into a reception-room of moderate proportions with a coarse divan at one end and a few chairs. Upon the walls are suspended a photograph or two, displaying the features of well-known ecclesiastics. A single priest and a bevy of lay teachers will be assembled to do the honours. On the occasion of our visit there were not less than twenty people present, and we were addressed in passable English by one of the teachers who had come from the American school. Coffee was served and cigarettes. No matter what the subject of conversation might happen to be, a certain middle-aged and sour-faced individual who sat in a corner would always insist upon putting in his say. To the remonstrances of his companions he would retort with much vehemence that his only privilege left in life was freedom of speech. In that cause he had withered in prison, from which he had only just been set free, and to which he was likely soon to return. Then he proceeded to heap curses upon the Turks and their government, until I was obliged to say that one of us two must leave the room. As a guest in a Turkish city, it would ill become me to listen to treason against hospitable and considerate hosts. The strange thing about this incident was the fact that these teachers should be willing to harbour such a suspicious character. He did not belong to the school. The reputation of the place was jeopardised by his presence. What children—so one reflected—these people are!

The younger pupils in the primary class will be collected in one vast room, seated on benches or on the floor. They are attired in nondescript and ragged cotton garments; and few even of the older scholars are possessed of suits in cloth. A number of smaller classrooms, with forms and blackboards, are approached from a long passage. Although the windows are all open, an unpleasant odour pervades the air; this is a characteristic which we deplored to our cost in every school at Van. It was evident that not even the American missionaries had yet succeeded in inculcating personal cleanliness. Perhaps some of the young people display the Jewish type—a relic probably of the colony settled in Van by the Arsakid king and said to have been removed into Persia by Shapur. These are by far the most favoured. The vast majority, however, have the less pronounced and more irregular features common among the youth of Europe. But their eyes are all very dark and very bright, shining like big beads. They look extremely intelligent. The little girls did not impress me as being very attractive; though, again, among the older maidens some beautiful Biblical types may be seen. These betray Semitic blood. The teachers in the girls’ schools were all very plain—broad as galleons, with round faces, straight hair and crooked eyes; what was wanting in their busts seemed to have been added below the waist.

Van, at the time of our visit, was the proud possessor of no less a dignitary than a Director of Public Instruction. Whatever may have been his full Turkish title, he was always addressed by the less ornate style of Mudir. By origin he was an Albanian, by religion a Mussulman; he spoke French well, and impressed me strongly as a zealous and capable man. It is a pity, and indeed a shame, that such material is not employed to fill the higher administrative posts. Although the Turkish schools fell more particularly within his province, to him was assigned the regulation of the Armenian private schools. They were constrained to submit their syllabus for his approval, and also their text-books. Changes or additions to their teaching staff were subject to the same sanction. I am not quite sure that these rules did not equally apply to the Church schools; but, however that may have been, they were in practice mildly enforced. The Turkish scholastic system, as it is operative in Van, comprises three grades. There is first the primary; then the secondary, which is termed Rushdiyeh; and last the college or lycÉe, called Idadiyeh. Of official primary schools not one existed prior to the arrival of the Mudir, only a few months before ourselves. The Mussulmans were in the habit of sending their children to small schools attached to the mosques. This practice had only partially been discontinued since the institution by the new functionary of six primary schools, numbering altogether some 240 boys. Of these fresh foundations I was only invited to visit one. Secondary education was dispensed in three institutions of the Rushdiyeh class to about 350 students in all. The Mudir was in hopes of opening an Idadiyeh during the following summer; and it was also his ambition that Christians as well as Mussulmans should attend the course. The bringing together of the two elements would certainly work to their mutual advantage; and the experiment might succeed if it were tried on social and educational grounds, and not as a political thrust against the Armenian schools.

Of the three secondary institutions only two deserve remark, the third being apparently in an inchoate state. Both are situated on the great avenue leading from the walled town and forming the artery of the gardens. So far as I could ascertain, neither dated more than a few years back. The spacious buildings in which they are housed, the fine classrooms, the dress of the pupils—everything contrasts to their advantage in external matters with the comparative squalor of the Armenian schools. We did not see a single untidy youth; the air was sweet, the floors scrupulously clean. Scholars and teachers, with the exception of a mollah or two, were attired in a distinctive uniform. Such, indeed, was the case in both institutions; but it was a more noticeable feature in the more numerously attended of the two, popularly known as the military school. The Mudir was careful to explain that it was not in fact a military school; that it so appeared was due to the circumstance that they had been unable to obtain good civilian teachers, and had been obliged to have recourse to the military academy at Constantinople. I was the more inclined to give implicit credit to this statement after making the acquaintance of the staff of the purely civilian school. It was evident, however, that the instructors in the companion establishment had not abandoned any of their military methods. They wore their uniforms, and all their pupils, even the youngest, had been drilled. Here again we were introduced to a copy of Russian institutions; and we might almost have been visiting the Russian High School at Erivan. The curriculum included the French, Persian and Arabic languages. The boys had evidently learnt by rote, but had learned well. They could draw maps of the countries of Europe on the blackboard. One of their number stood up and answered all geographical questions with an accuracy which no German boy could excel. The outline of England was rapidly sketched in from memory; and, when I enquired the situations of even Greenwich and Gravesend, they were each assigned their proper place. The population of London was correctly given. Most of the faces one saw around one were extremely intelligent; and only in a few instances were those dull, stupid features conspicuous which are not rare among the settled Mussulman population. All, without exception, were Mohammedans, and the majority the sons of officials. Unlike the Armenian boys, most of whom wear a shapeless cap, every youth had a clean fez with tassel upon his head. In the evening they would canter off on richly caparisoned horses; but, to sum up the relative merits of the Armenian and the Turkish schools, while the first contemplate Knowledge, the second pursue her image, heedless of the resentment which the sensitive goddess keeps in store.

While one is walking through the gardens, paying visits to the various schools, the attention will often be distracted to the very interesting churches, of a type which I have not seen in any other Armenian town. It might not be inappropriate to call them log churches, although the outer walls are built of stone. The oldest is no doubt that of Haykavank, situated in the quarter of the same name. I was unable to ascertain its age. But it represents a transition form from the usual stone edifice to the style of the other four churches in the gardens, in which the columns of the nave, the roofs and the interior fittings are exclusively of wood. The exteriors of all are featureless and plain. In Haykavank the nave is separated from the aisles by four stone piers as well as by sixteen wooden shafts, eight on each side. The face of the daÏs supporting the altar is also of stone. Light is thrown upon the interior through three box-shaped structures in the roof, each containing four windows (Fig. 128). The shafts are in every church mere trunks of trees with the bark lopped off them; and at the west end, seen in the background of my illustration, will always be situated a wooden gallery for the women. The floors are carpeted. The most attractive of the five is Norashen, remarkable for its two octagonal domes in wood. The largest is Arakh, with a length inside of 135 feet and a breadth of a little over 56 feet. It appears to have been built as late as 1884 on the site of a smaller edifice. Nor is Norashen said to have been constructed more than about fifty years ago. It is remarkable that of these five churches of the gardens—the remainder are known respectively as Hankusner and Yakob—all, with the exception of the last, are dedicated to the Virgin. The same may be said of two out of six in the walled town. The fact would seem to point to something approaching a cult of the Virgin, though plainly not for the reason for which, according to Voltaire, she was worshipped in old France.

One may be disposed to linger awhile in two of these churches—Haykavank and Hankusner. The first is filled with the musty memories of the dark ages, and the second with the vivid magnetism of a personality which has not yet been removed from our midst. The ancient stone crosses inlaid into the daÏs of Haykavank, the painted reliefs of angels in the screen of the altar, and a most barbarous carved panel of the Last Supper are so many survivals of pure mediÆvalism. The dingy logs and the rickety boxes in the roof, through the little windows of which the sweet light falls, are in harmony with the stiff figures, overlaid with gaudy but faded colours, which turn towards one from the shrine. From an adjoining apartment comes the sound of a chant by the choir at practice—a graceless music, sung through the nose. During a respite from this discord you hear the tick of an old standard clock; and, moving towards it, read the name of its English maker years ago—Markwick Markham of the city of London. It has a companion of its own kind in this same church. Here they have stood and ticked in company for, I wonder, how many years! The colleague is by Michael Paieff of Vienna, and has a song chime, so sweet and clear and pure.... Hankusner, on the other hand, if devoid of any antiquities, is associated with a name which should always be honoured in Armenian history, and with a spirit which calls to the Church to throw off her mediÆval fetters and look into the light of the day. It was in that humble structure across the river, beneath the cliff of Toprak Kala, that Mekertich Khrimean was for many years accustomed to address his countrymen, standing upon the low daÏs by the altar beneath the roof of logs. His humble residence is situated on the Van side of the stream. You knock, and a man in the garb of a peasant steps forth and holds your reins as you dismount. Yet he is the nephew of the supreme pontiff of the Armenians. He informs you that this was the house in which the Hayrik was born. It is now tenanted by the girls’ school. The rooms are neatly maintained, but their walls of mud are neither plastered nor papered. That which used to serve as his sleeping apartment contains a couple of wooden divans, used as seats by day and couches by night. Two pictures, one in oil and the other a crayon, portray the familiar face in youth as well as in age. What a handsome type, with the magnificent features and silky black beard! The remaining frames, most, no doubt, due to the piety of his relations, display by the side of Armenian texts the title page of a journal upon which figures in all his splendour the eagle of Vaspurakan.

It is quite a ride from the heart of the gardens to the walled city. The central avenue leads through great open spaces some time before the gate in the east wall is reached. On the left hand, across the fields, lie the less dense plantations of the quarter of Shamiram. The main entrance adjoins the rock which supports the battlements of the citadel, and is called the gate of Tabriz. Extremely picturesque is the appearance from this side of the precipitous ridge, with the long serration of the mediÆval wall sharply outlined against the sky, and the ponderous towers crowning the hump of the mass (Fig. 129). It forms the northern side of the irregular parallelogram which is described by the walls of the city at its southern base. The area thus enclosed is of very moderate size, and the central and southern quarters seem pressed for room. These constitute the busy portion of the town, containing the bazars and the mosques. The former are, as usual in the East, thronged with motley figures; and quite a crowd collected as I set up the camera inside a booth upon which were spread out a variety of cheap comestibles (Fig. 130). The mosques, of which there are three besides smaller places of prayer, are not, I think, worthy of remark. Only two, Kaia Chellaby and Khusrevieh, are at present frequented by the faithful. The third, Topchi Oglu, in the more northerly quarter, is now no longer used. Its minaret may be seen on the right side of my illustration depicting the house of a rich Armenian in this district (Fig. 127). In addition, there is at least one mosque in the garden suburb, known as the Hafizieh. Khusrevieh deserves attention for its cuneiform slab, built into the pavement upon the threshold of the building. It was swimming in mud when we elbowed our way towards it through a Friday’s assembly of not too friendly bystanders. I had been informed of the existence of a second tablet, but could not discover its whereabouts.81

But there exists in the city a ruined mosque which mocks these Turkish edifices and is really a noteworthy example of Arab art. It is strange that it does not appear to have been mentioned by any traveller. The Ulu Jami, or great mosque, is situated in the western quarter, under the precipice of the citadel rock, which is here at its highest, and of which the sheer escarpments tower into the sky. The rareness and humility of the adjoining houses permit the view to wander from the remains of this beautiful building along the face of the upstanding limestone to the great tablet with the inscription of Xerxes some little distance east of where you stand. Two great periods of world history are embodied in these two monuments; and, as we gazed upon them, the rock and tablet were bathed in the yellow light of evening, while the mosque was in shade. No one could tell us by whom it had been constructed, nor when it fell into decay. The pigeons build their nests in the crannies of the kiln-burnt bricks of which it is composed. In the centre rises a pillar, seen on the left of my illustration; the angles are filled with the stalactite architecture dear to the Arabs (Fig. 131). The clay traceries upon the walls are as hard as stone and as delicate as ivory (Fig. 132).

The Armenian churches are in general situated in the close vicinity of the overhanging parapet from which the works of the citadel frown. Although for the most part of considerable antiquity, none has any claim to architectural pretensions, such as one might expect in the capital of the mediÆval kingdom of Vaspurakan. Indeed in their original form they are small and quite plain stone chapels; and the church proper has probably been added at a much later period, being furnished with the log pillars and plank boxes in the roof characteristic of the churches in the gardens. Access to the chapel is gained through an opening in the daÏs at the east end of the church. The entrance will usually be closed by a door with double folds. In some churches or on some occasions this door will be thrown open when service is being held. The priest will then stand with his back to the congregation upon the step on the threshold of the chapel. On the other hand, I have also attended when one would scarcely divine the existence of such an inner sanctuary. The priest performed his functions upon the daÏs of the church before an altar of the usual gaudy order. It is therefore evident that the uses of the larger building oscillate between those of a mere pronaos and a church in the proper sense.

These edifices are six in number: Surb Tiramayr (the mother of the Master, i.e. Jesus Christ), Surb Vardan, Surb Paulos, Surb Neshan or the token, so called from a relic of the Cross, Surb Sahak, Surb Tsiranavor. The last is of almost tiny proportions, and is named after the Virgin with the purple robes. A seventh chapel, close to Surb Paulos, bears the name of Surb Petros, or St. Peter, but was severely shaken by an earthquake a few years ago, and has been partially destroyed to prevent it collapsing. High mud walls, such as may be seen on the left of the photograph of the house in Van (Fig. 127), enclose the courts in which the churches are built. You enter through a low door of great weight after hammering with a ponderous knocker. The most interesting of all is certainly Surb Paulos; and the teachers in Yisusean, who accompanied me on my visit, were inclined to ascribe it to the times of St. Thaddeus. I see no reason to doubt that certain parts of the chapel date back to an epoch before the advent of St. Gregory, when Christianity must have flourished in Vaspurakan. Surb Paulos seems to have served as a model to the other churches; and the chapel is approached through the usual pronaos or church proper. The inside dimensions of the chapel are 57 feet by 27½ feet; and the thickness of the stone wall on the west side, where it is capable of being measured, is not less than 7 feet. Of rectangular shape, the disposition of the interior is not abnormal. You have an apse on the east side, preceded by a daÏs or raised stage in stone; and the roof centres in a conical dome of great depth and admirable masonry, in which a row of loophole apertures admit a scanty light. The dome is supported by piers adhering to the walls. There is not a trace of plaster or ornament in the place; and the dark hue of the naked stone enhances the gloom. We observed three blocks which had been built into the walls and were inscribed with cuneiform characters. But they appeared to have been hewn without any regard to the inscriptions, which must have suffered considerable mutilation. Better treatment had evidently befallen a large inscribed slab which had been used as a lintel or upper stone, roofing a niche in a recess of the south wall. The arrowhead writing was well preserved. In this same wall we admired a most beautiful Armenian cross, carved in bold relief upon a stone panel 5 feet high and 4 feet broad. We seemed to be able to read a date—409 of the Armenian era or A.D. 960. My reader is already familiar with these crosses (Fig. 59, Vol. I. p. 271); but I regret that the light in the sanctuary was much too dim to enable me to photograph the most artistic specimen of this form of ornament which I remember to have seen.82

The citadel crowns the summit of the isolated ridge which forms the northern side of the fortified town. This is the famous rock of Van (Fig. 129). It rises to the height of about 300 feet from level land on all sides. The ridge is narrow in proportion to its length, and has a direction a few points north of an east-west line. In shape it has been compared to the back of a camel, the citadel occupying the hump. The sides of the mass, which is composed of a limestone so hard that it resists a knife, are most precipitous on the south. They are most amenable at the western and eastern extremities. The remains of an ancient wall with inscriptions of Sarduris the First may be discovered at the western end. The wall was probably protracted to the lake in the neighbourhood of the present harbour. There are no houses on the north side. The ground in that direction is waste or disposed for pasture; and a little marsh adjoins in one part the base of the rock. We tried our best, but in vain, to obtain permission to visit the citadel. The Pasha was powerless and the Commandant obdurate. The majority of modern travellers have met with the same refusal, due, no doubt, to a desire to hide the nakedness of the place. The blandishments of Schulz, as well, perhaps, as the hopes he held out of discovering treasure, were successful in effecting a temporary breach in the tradition of official obstinacy. He was admitted within the gate of the inmost fortress, to find it occupied by a garrison of two living creatures—an old janissary and a tame bear. Later visitors, more privileged than ourselves, tell of a few obsolete cannon. The disappointment which is engendered by the attitude of the authorities may be appreciated by the fact that the caves of Khorkhor and other antiquities are included within the fortified area. I have endeavoured in the accompanying note83 to offer some description of them, largely at second hand. The general impression which we may receive is that the ancient works upon the ridge belie the hopes excited by the account contained in the pages of Moses of Khorene. They do not amount to much more than a few groups of chambers excavated in the rock. The purpose which these caves served was almost certainly that of tombs; though they may also have been used as refuges in time of war. It must, however, be remembered that all the ancient structures upon the rock have long since been destroyed. The same fate has befallen even the staircases. Some of the recesses appear to have been destined to receive bas-reliefs; and if such may have been the case, these images have been demolished. Yet enough remains, especially the elegant characters of the many inscriptions, to fill the mind with admiration of that old race and vanished culture. They were certainly not lacking in the instincts of imagination; and, year by year, they must have taken pleasure in gazing out upon the landscape from the grottos constructed to receive them when they died. A people of Cyclopean walls, embossed shields and chariots, they would almost seem to have belonged to the race of giants, preceding the evolution of fox-like man.

I must not close this chapter and dismiss the memories of the paradise of Van without bestowing some little space upon the surroundings of the city, which abundantly justify the Armenian proverb. The governing feature of the nearer landscape is the lofty parapet of Mount Varag, distant from the citadel some eight miles in an easterly direction and nearly ten miles from the margin of the lake. The plain rises gradually beyond the limits of field and garden to meet and mingle with those slopes. Spurs connect the mountain with the irregular hill mass on the north of the suburbs, which in its totality appears to be known under the name of Zemzem Dagh. Like Varag itself, these hills are composed of a hard limestone; and their south-westerly extremity is signalised by a very bold, detached crag, standing forth like a sentinel (Fig. 133, and see the plan). This portion of the mass is known as Ak KÖpri, which means in Turkish “the white bridge.” That is the name of a straggling quarter, inhabited by Mussulmans, on the north side of the little river and close to the crag.84

The stream itself is also called Ak KÖpri; and, coming from Van gardens, we crossed it by a little bridge. Standing close to the crag, which we reached after a short ride, the view ranged widely in all directions except that of the cliffs at our back. Looking west and south we had the great plain before us, bounded only at an interval of many miles by low hills circling from Varag into the lake in front of the distant barrier of the Kurdish mountains. Turning round, we commanded a view of uncultivated flats, extending several miles to another line of bare hills ending on the west in a crag, called Kalajik. The only trace of verdure in that landscape were the gardens of the village of Shahbagh. But the outlines of the promontories, the blue lake, the distant fabrics of Nimrud and Sipan, composed into a picture it would be difficult to forget.

The level ground in the direction of Kalajik forms the first of two extensions of the plain of Van, properly called. Retracing our steps for a short distance, we soon turned off in an easterly direction, and rounded the bluff of Ak KÖpri. We found ourselves in the bay of cliffs which faces Van gardens; and we were soon standing in front of the great cuneiform inscription, which contains such an interesting list of the gods worshipped by the Vannic people, and of the sacrifices which were appointed for each god.85 The tablet is hewn into the rocky slope of the cliff, about 50 feet above the level and cultivated ground (Fig. 134). Some 10 feet below it is a shallow cave. Three successive jambs recess inwards to the face of the tablet from that of the rock, which has been flattened on either side. The depth of the recess is 4 feet 2 inches. The dimensions of the tablet or polished surface containing the inscription are a breadth of 6 feet 5 inches and a height of about 17 feet 6 inches. From a distance the recessed slab has all the appearance of a door giving access to a grotto behind.

After continuing our direction for no great space we mounted to the summit of the cliff. It may be some 200 feet high. But the flat top rises at its southerly extremity to a level of about double that altitude above the gardens of Van. These are the heights of Toprak Kala. From a cleft in the mass we opened out the upper valley of the Ak KÖpri Su, the second of the extensions of the plain of Van of which I have spoken (Fig. 135). The mountain in the background of my photograph is Varag.

The monastery of Yedi Kilisa, situated on the slopes of that mountain, is the most frequented of the numerous cloisters in the neighbourhood; and thither we made our way on a fine November day. The first snowstorm of the coming winter had raged during the night; and the snow was lying in spite of a brilliant sun. A ride of some seven miles along the windings of the track brought us to the door of the enclosure. We had passed over rising ground, in places furrowed by the plough, but, except for the oasis of the village and monastery of Shushantz, entirely devoid of trees. A mere fleck upon the white canopy of the hills on our right hand had been named to us as the cloister of Surb Khach. Our Armenian friends in Van were fond of speaking of these foundations as centres of light and learning in the older and happier times. They have been scattered with a liberal hand over this magnificent landscape; yet how they have fallen from their estate! Two poor monks, who lived on gritty bread and salted cheese inlaid with herbs, received us at the gate. One was the abbot, or rather the deputy of the abbot; for that office is still held by the present Katholikos, the Hayrik or Little Father of the Armenians. Daniel Vardapet—for so he was addressed—is a type of the better-educated priest. A delicate man some fifty years of age, his features were those of a Casaubon. I am afraid his attainments would not compare with those of that scholar; yet he had the suavity and the speech of a cultivated man. His assistant was a monk of the peasant class. Some fifteen youths were housed in the cloister—the remnant of the school founded there years ago by Khrimean. A cloud of unusual gloom enveloped the destinies of the ancient place; and one might doubt whether the gentle Daniel had ever experienced so many calamities during the thirty-five years which he had passed within these walls. The most severely felt of all the blows which the Turkish Government had been raining upon them was the loss of their printing press. Some short while back the officials appeared and walked off with the precious instrument, of which the voice had been mute for many years. They erected it in Van, and, having kidnapped an Armenian compositor, used it to publish an official gazette. In company with the Mudir I had happened to pass the building where it was lodged; and my companion remarked to me that he was looking forward to obtaining some money for his schools with the proceeds of the sale of the paper.86

The site of the monastery is a dip or pass upon the outline of gentle hills which stretch from the more southerly slopes of the mountain to confine the plain upon the south (Fig. 136). From its windows only a vista of the lake is obtained. The church consists of a larger pronaos with the usual conical dome, communicating on the east by a richly moulded and spacious doorway with a chapel or sanctuary.87 The interior of this chapel recalls features in St. Ripsime at Edgmiatsin. It has four apses or recesses, one on each wall, separated from one another by deep niches. The whole is surmounted by a conical dome (Fig. 137). In the floor of the pronaos are seen three stone slabs with inscriptions. They cover the remains of King Senekerim, of the Armenian mediÆval dynasty, his queen Khoshkhosh and the Katholikos Petros. The frame of an altar erected upon the site of these slabs has been stripped of all its ornaments. This act appears to have been committed by the Hayrik, and out of anger against Senekerim.88 The mild features of Daniel Vardapet contracted as we spoke of that monarch; and he assured me with some vehemence that he would dig out his bones and cast them on the rocks were it not for his title of king of Armenia. The chapel of Yedi Kilisa is most interesting to the student of architecture, and is no doubt a work of considerable antiquity. A ruined chapel on the south of the building contains a much-effaced inscription to the effect that it was constructed by the lady Khoshkhosh, daughter of Gagik and queen of Senekerim.89

1 Strabo, xi. 529. This account exactly corresponds to the phenomena presented by Lake Urmi, and it is impossible to apply it to Lake Van as Ritter (Erdkunde, ix. p. 784) has done. It is quite true that Strabo has already six chapters back mentioned and described the former under the name of Spauta, which is quite likely a misprint for Kapauta, a corruption of the Armenian name Kapotan, which, in turn, is evidently derived from the Armenian word kapoyt, signifying blue (Saint Martin, MÉmoires, i. p. 59). In that passage he rightly places the lake in the Atropatian Media; while in chapter 529 he speaks of it under a different name, that of Mantiane, and says that it extends as far as Atropatia. But that the Mantiane, as described by Strabo, is not our Lake Van, and that the latter is in many respects most faithfully portrayed by him under the name Thopitis in sentences immediately following, there can, I think, be little doubt.?

2 Liddell and Scott, sub voce ??t???.?

3 Pliny, Hist. Naturalis, vi. ch. 31, translated by Philemon Holland, London, 1635. I have myself added the sentences in brackets.?

4 I have derived these particulars not from personal observation, but for the greater part from the notices of Abich (Vergleichende chemische Untersuchungen der Wasser des Caspischen Meeres, Urmia und Van-See’s, MÉm. Acad. Sc. St. Petersburg, 1859, Series 6 math. et phys. vol. vii. pp. 22 seq.); Loftus (Quarterly Journal Geological Soc. London, 1855, vol. xi. pp. 306 seq.); and Mr. R. T. GÜnther (Geographical Journal, November 1899, and Proceedings of the Royal Society, October 1899).?

5 Brandt and Wagner quoted by Sieger (Die Schwankungen der hocharmenischen Seen, Vienna, 1888, p. 22).?

6 Dr. W. Belck in Globus, 1894, vol. lxv. p. 302; A. Owerin in Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1858, p. 471; Professor Hughes in Nature, February 1898.?

7 The traveller journeying along the GÜzel Dere on the way from Van to Bitlis cannot fail to be impressed by the insignificance of the water-parting between the small stream, called Sapor Su, tributary to Lake Van, and the brooks which find their way to the Tigris.?

8 To the analysis of my sample by Mr. William Thorp I append that of Dr. Serda of Strasbourg from one brought by M. MÜller-Simonis from Van and published on p. 258 of Du Caucase au Golfe Persique, Paris, 1892. I have also thought it well to include the analysis published by Mr. GÜnther of the water of Lake Urmi. These will be found in the appendix to this volume.

Small lakes impregnated with soda have been found along the south-east foot of the Ararat fabric on the right bank of the Araxes. From sodas so derived an excellent soap used to be made in Alexandropol, and, for all I know, may be still manufactured there. The same practice is related of the inhabitants of Van. See Abich’s article (op. cit. pp. 32 seq.), and Loftus (op. cit. p. 320).?

9 It must, however, be noted that certainly in the case of Lake Van no islands are found far from the shore. The last rise in level took place about 1895; and in that year there was an earthquake at Adeljivas. The inhabitants of Uran Gazi on the slopes of Sipan assured us that this earthquake produced a rise in level of the Jil GÖl, adjacent to the village.?

10 The subject is fully discussed by Abich (op. cit.) and by Dr. Sieger (Die Schwankungen der hocharmenischen Seen seit 1800, Vienna, 1888, and Globus, 1894, vol. lxv. pp. 73–75). Notable contributions have been made by Loftus (op. cit.), by Strecker (Zeitschrift der Gesell. fÜr Erdkunde, Berlin, 1869, pp. 549 seq.) and by Dr. Belck (Globus, vol. lxiv. pp. 157 seq. and vol. lxv. pp. 301 seq.; Zeitschrift fÜr Ethnologie, Berlin, 1898, p. 414).?

11 It will, however, be observed that there is a discrepancy between the condition of Lake GÖkcheh and that of Lake Van during the seventies and eighties. The testimony of General Schindler and of Dr. Rodler is in favour of the view that Lake Urmi was in agreement with Lake Van during the same period (Sieger, Die Schwankungen, etc., p. 18).?

12 Loftus, op. cit. p. 319.?

13 Globus, 1894, vol. lxv. pp. 301 and 303.?

14 Geographical Journal, November 1899, p. 513.?

15 Zeits. Gesell. f. Erdkunde, Berlin, 1869, vol. iv. p. 550.?

16 Indications of a similar rise in the norm of the level of Lake GÖljik in the southern peripheral region have been noted by Prof. Josef WÜnsch (Mitth. der K. K. geog. Gesellschaft, Vienna, 1885, vol. xxviii. pp. 15–17).?

17 Moses of Khorene, i. 18.?

18 Ibid. i. 3.?

19 See the memoir of Saint Martin by Brosset prefixed to vol. xiii. of Lebeau’s Histoire du Bas-Empire, and Saint Martin’s article in the Journal Asiatique for 1828.?

20 Journal Asiatique, Paris, 1828, vol. ii. series 2, pp. 160–188.?

21 Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853, p. 394.?

22 “On the Inscriptions of Van,” Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1848, vol. ix., two papers read by Dr. Hincks on 4th December 1847, and 4th March 1848.?

23 Journal Asiatique, Paris, 1880, vol. xv. series 7, pp. 540–543.?

24 Professor Sayce’s papers are contained in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xiv. 1882; vol. xx. 1888; vol. xxv. 1893; vol. xxvi. 1894. They should be referred to in the first instance by the student who wishes to penetrate further into the subject.?

25 To the names of Belck, Guyard, Lehmann, and Sayce, should be added that of Professor D. H. MÜller of Vienna, the author of several papers on the subject, of which the most important is entitled “Die Keilinschrift von Aschrut-Darga, entdeckt und beschrieben von Professor J. WÜnsch, publicirt und erklÄrt von Dr. D. H. MÜller,” Vienna, 1886.?

26 So we read in the newly-acquired text of the stele at Topsana (Sidikan), near Rowanduz:—“Urzana, son of Shekikajana, fled to Khaldia; I, Rusas (i.e. Rusas I. of Van) marched as far as the mountains of Assyria” (Dr. Belck in Zeitschrift fÜr Ethnologie, Berlin, 1899, p. 116). [The translation of this passage appears, however, to have been altered by Messrs. Belck and Lehmann. See Sitzungsberichte der K. K. Preuss. Akad., Berlin, June 1900. It would appear natural that the Khaldians should have called their land after their god, and Dr. Belck (loc. cit.) appears to entertain no doubt upon the point. On the other hand Prof. Sayce informs me that he has never found the name Khaldia in the Vannic inscriptions; and that in Assyrian Khaldia signifies the god Khaldis.]?

27 Cedrenus, Hist. ii. 774.?

28 Saint Martin, MÉmoires sur l’ArmÉnie, vol. i. pp. 131 and 138. Cp. Moses of Khorene, iii. 35, “inhabiting Van in the province of Dosp” with the title of the king in the inscriptions “king of Biaina inhabiting the city of Dhuspas.”?

29 Professor Sayce makes the suggestion (Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1882, vol. xiv. p. 394). The expression Bitani seems to have been loosely used; but it appears to have been applied to the peripheral region south of Lake Van, and it may survive in the name of the river Bohtan.?

30 Messrs. Belck and Lehmann adopt a later date, viz. c. 1000 B.C. See Verhandlungen der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anthropologie, 1898, p. 569.?

31 Recently discovered by Messrs. Belck and Lehmann (Verhandlungen der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anthropologie, 1898, p. 574).?

32 Great confusion has been caused by the fact that the Assyrians had no distinctive names for the two great lakes. The subject is elucidated by Schrader (Die Namen der Meere in den assyrischen Inschriften, Abh. Berl. Akad. Wiss., 1877, Berlin, 1878, pp. 169 seq.; Zeitschrift fÜr Assyriologie, 1886, pp. 81 seq.; Sitzungsberichte der K. Pr. Ak. Wiss. Berlin, 1890, pp. 321 seq.) and by Dr. Belck in Verhandlungen (ut supra), 1894, p. 485.?

33 See Vol. I. Ch. XXI. p. 423.?

34 I retain the former spelling of the names of Shamshi-Hadad and Hadad-nirari.?

35 An admirable account of the operations of Tiglath-Pileser III. is given by Professor Lehmann in the Verhandlungen der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anthropologie, 1896, pp. 321 seq. The scheme of the defences of the Vannic kings is ably elucidated by Dr. Belck (Zeitschrift fÜr Assyriologie, 1894, vol. ix. p. 350, note).?

36 His next successor, Ispuinis, is styled king of Nairi in the Kelishin inscription and king of Biaina in that of Ashrut Darga. The succeeding monarchs are kings of Biaina, inhabiting the city of Dhuspas (Van).?

37 The best account of the Shamiram-Su or canal of Menuas is that given by Dr. Belck (Zeitschrift fÜr Ethnologie, 1892, pp. 137 seq.). I am under the impression that the greater part of the waters of the canal still find their way to the quarter of Van called Shamiram.?

38 Perhaps Dr. Belck, to whose penetration this discovery is due, has a little exaggerated his point when he assumes the necessity of an interval of 5 kilometres between the former site of the garden town and the rock of Van (Zeitschrift fÜr Assyriologie, 1894, p. 350). It would seem, rather, that the present quarter of Shamiram represents a portion of the old settlement as watered by the Menuas canal.?

39 “Set up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her (sc. Babylon), call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashchenaz ...” (Jeremiah li. 27). The latter kingdom seems to have been situated between the Medes at Hamadan and the Minni.?

40 It must always be remembered that such enterprises are due with us to the energy of individuals, rarely encouraged and inspired by our learned societies or assisted financially by our Government. I trust, however, that the trustees of the British Museum will awake to the fact that excavations of the most comprehensive order can now be conducted in Armenia, and that the soil is practically virgin. With the assistance of the German Embassy at Constantinople Messrs. Belck and Lehmann were enabled not only to dig down the hill of Toprak Kala to the solid rock, but also, as it would appear, to transport their finds to Berlin.?

41 I cannot discover that any report of these excavations has ever been published. But, since writing this chapter, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam’s book, Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (New York, 1897), has come into my hands. Mr. Rassam’s excavations on the hill of Toprak Kala took place in 1880, and some account of them may be found in his work, pp. 377–8.?

42 For the excavations at Toprak Kala the various writings of Messrs. Belck and Lehmann should be consulted (Verhandlungen der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anthropologie, 1895, pp. 612 seq., and 1898, pp. 578 seq. Cp. also Zeitschrift fÜr Assyriologie, 1894, pp. 356 and 357, note). For the canal and the city of Rusas or New Dhuspas see their remarks in Zeitschrift fÜr Ethnologie, 1892, pp. 141 seq.; Verh. der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anth. 1892, pp. 477 seq.; 1893, pp. 220, 222, 223; 1898, p. 576; Zeitschrift fÜr Assyr. 1894, pp. 349 seq., and 1899, p. 320.?

43 This is evidently the older form of the legend of Semiramis in Armenia. The Christian hierarchy softened down or obliterated the coming to life again of Ara.?

44 The name of this goddess only occurs in one inscription, viz. Sayce, No. XXIV.; and it is interesting to observe that this is an inscription of Menuas. The name is written ideographically like that of Istar in Assyrian and is rendered Saris by Professor Sayce. It is noticeable that Sariduris or Sarduris is the name borne by three of the Vannic kings.?

45 The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1882, vol. xiv. p. 678. The languages are Babylonian, Persian and “Protomedic,” placed in parallel columns.?

46 Professor Sayce (Early Israel, London, 1899, pp. 238–239) adopts this date and considers that the classical writers confounded the Scythians with the Medes. A priori this view would seem probable, having regard to the natural evolution of the history of the times.?

47 According to Herodotus (vii. 73) the Armenians were Phrygian colonists and were armed in the Phrygian fashion. The view of the ancients seems to have been that the Phrygians, as well as the Asiatic Thracians, had migrated from Europe into Asia Minor.?

48 Herodotus, i. 72 and 194; v. 49 and 52. In the catalogue of the satrapies of the empire of Darius Armenia is joined with the unknown district of Pactyica (iii. 93). In the Behistun inscriptions of Darius, the Persian and Scythic texts everywhere employ Armenia for the more ancient Assyrian title Urardhu.?

49 For the certain identification of the Alarodians with the inhabitants of the kingdom of Urardhu or Ararat, see Sir. H. Rawlinson’s essay in Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. iv. p. 245.?

50 Herodotus, iii. 94, and cp. vii. 79.?

51 Ibid. i. 104.?

52 Professor Rawlinson would identify the Saspeires with the Iberians of later writers (Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. iv. p. 233). In view of the prevailing opinion that the old Vannic language has some affinity with modern Georgian, this identification is most interesting. Ispir is situated on the threshold of the northern peripheral region, on the river Chorokh.?

53 Xenophon, CyropÆdeia, bk. iii. chs. 1, 2 and 3.?

54 Zeitschrift fÜr Ethnologie, 1892, p. 131; Verhandlungen der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anthropologie, 1892, p. 487, 1895, pp. 578 seq., 1896, p. 320; Zeitschrift fÜr Assyriologie, 1894, pp. 82 seq., and p. 358, note 1.?

55 Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, translated by C. R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, London, 1859.?

56 Xenophon, Anabasis, iv. ch. 3, v. ch. 5, vii. ch. 8.?

57 The remarks of Layard (Nineveh and its Remains, London, 1849, vol. i. p. 257) and Badger (The Nestorians and their Rituals, London, 1852, pp. 177 seq.) serve to illustrate the complexity of this question.?

58 Compare the remarks of Sir H. Rawlinson (Rawlinson’s Herodotus, iv. p. 248) and of Professor Lehmann (Verhandlungen der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anthropologie, 1895, p. 580).?

59 Vol. I. Ch. XVI. p. 286.?

60 Xenophon, CyropÆdeia, bk. iii. ch. ii. 23.?

61 Verhandlungen der Berl. Gesell. fÜr Anthropologie, 1898, p. 591. I would especially refer my reader to Dr. Belck’s remarks upon this subject in the same publication, 1895, p. 606.?

62 While this chapter is going through the press some further articles by Drs. Belck and Lehmann come into my hands. These deal with their recent journeys and researches in Armenia (Sitzungsberichte der K. P. Ak. Wiss. Berlin, 1899, pp. 116 seq. and pp. 745 seq.; the same publication for 1900, pp. 619 seq.).?

63 Messrs. Belck and Lehmann commence the sequence: 1. Lutipris, 2. Sarduris I., 3. Arame, 4. Sarduris II., thus attributing to their Sarduris I. the inscriptions which record the construction of the walls from the rock of Van to the harbour. They suppose a Sarduris II., son of Arame, as the antagonist of Shalmaneser II., and suggest that Sarduris I. was the contemporary of Ashur-nasir-pal II. (885–860 B.C.) (Zeitschrift fÜr Assyriologie, 1897, p. 201). This arrangement throws back Lutipris to about 900 B.C. They promise us an essay upon the subject (see Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fÜr Anthropologie, 1894, p. 486; Z. Assyr. 1897, pp. 200, 201, 202). At present I do not feel convinced by the grounds they have brought forward. No inscriptions of this Sarduris II. have been discovered; nor does any mention appear to be made of works by a predecessor of the same name or by Arame in the inscriptions near the Tabriz gate at Van which they have discovered (see under Ispuinis infra). Of Lutipris no inscriptions exist; he is only known as the father of Sarduris. Pending further enquiry the hypothesis of Professor Sayce seems to me to hold the field: “I am more inclined to conjecture that Sarduris I. was the leader of a new dynasty; the ill success of Arrame in his wars with the Assyrians forming the occasion for his overthrow ... the introduction of a foreign mode of writing into the country looks like one of those innovations which mark the rise of new dynasties in the East. The consolidation of the power of Darius Hystaspis was, we may remember, accompanied by the introduction of the cuneiform alphabet of Persia” (J.R.A.S. 1882, p. 406). To this I should like to add that it seems consonant with the true order of events that not until after the defeat of Arame was the site of Van most happily selected as a sure stronghold against Assyrian attacks—a choice which was largely instrumental in producing the extraordinary development of the northern kingdom under Ispuinis, Menuas, and Argistis.?

64 May Arzasku have been situated in the great plain at the southern foot of the Ararat system, now known as the district of Alashkert? The inscription of Shalmaneser runs: “From Dayaeni (which Dr. Belck identifies with the district about the modern Delibaba) I struck camp and approached Arzasku, the capital of the Urardhian Arame. The Urardhian Arame was filled with fear ... and deserted his city. To the mountains Adduri he fled up; behind him I followed; a great battle I fought in the mountains.... Arame was compelled, in order to save his life, to take refuge in an inaccessible mountain.” Dr. Belck suggests that Adduri may have been the name applied by the Khaldians to Ararat and the Ararat system; and that it may survive in the modern Akhury or Arguri (V. Anth. 1893. p. 71).?

65 V. Anth. 1896, pp. 323 and 325. The translation is, however, open to question.?

66 The inscription is contained on one face of a recumbent stone which can with difficulty be distinguished from the boulders lying round. The stone has been well shaped and dressed. The characters have been much mutilated by the figure of a cross which has been incised upon the face of the stone. The first line evidently contains the name of Sarduris, while the second was probably occupied by that of Argistikhinis, or the son of Argistis. In line 7 a conquest is recorded, and in line 8 occurs the name of Alusia. Professor Sayce has kindly supplied this brief account of the contents, and I trust that he will publish the text.?

67 Arakel, ap. Abich, Geolog. Forsch. in den kauk. LÄnd. Vienna, 1882, part ii. p. 440.?

68 Saint Martin, MÉmoires sur l’ArmÉnie, i. 138.?

69 Moses of Khorene, ii. 8.?

70 Ibid. ii. 19.?

71 Faustus of Byzantium, iv. 55.?

72 Vol. I. Ch. XVIII. pp. 357, 359.?

73 Merchant in Persia (Italian Travels in Persia, Hakluyt Society, 1873, pp. 179 seq.). The Kurd is called Zidibec.?

74 Von Hammer, Geschichte des Osm. Reiches, iii. 145.?

75 Ritter, Erdkunde, ix. 980. But the date he gives, viz. 1636, will not suit the chronology.?

76 Brant in Journal of R. Geog. Soc. 1841, vol. x.?

77 Taylor in archives of the British Consulate at Erzerum. Report of March 18, 1869. The estimates of Jaubert in 1805 (Voyage en ArmÉnie, etc. p. 138), and of Layard in 1850 (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 392), appear to have reference to the walled town only. The former counts 15,000 to 20,000 souls, the majority Armenian. The latter says that Van may contain from 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. Shiel’s figure for the population, including the suburbs, in 1836, of 12,000 people, “of whom 2000 are Armenians,” is plainly in error (J.R.G.S. 1838, vol. x.). Vital Cuinet (La Turquie d’Asie, Paris, 1892, vol. ii. pp. 654, 691), whose statistics I have seldom found reliable, includes 500 Jews in the population of Van—the remnant of the colony transported thither by the Arsakid Tigranes. My enquiries in several quarters elicited replies that no Jews were known to inhabit either the town or the caza, but that there were 25 families at Bashkala.

With regard to any special elements in the population of the town and caza of Van I was informed as follows:—There may be some few score Circassians; but there is no regular Circassian settlement here. The Armenians are practically all Gregorians. Of ChaldÆan Christians, whether adherents of their old faith or converts to Roman Catholicism, only a few stray individuals would be found in the town of Van. But I was informed of a settlement of them—Nestorians—about the shores of Lake Archag, north-east of Van.?

78 Du Caucase au Golfe Persique, Paris, 1892, p. 190.?

79 One lira or Turkish pound contains 100 piastres and is equal to 18 shillings.?

80 I append the names and situations of the Armenian schools. Private schools are marked with a P.