A RIDE THROUGH ASIA MINOR AND ARMENIA. * Tun fact
that this journey was made a dozen years ago inter- feres a little, perhaps, with the use and interest of this record of it. The ride was undertaken by Mr. Barkley and his brother in the autumn of 1878, soon after the close of the Plevna campaign, when Turkey was what she periodically becomes, a chief object of interest in the eyes of Europe. At that time the book would have been very popular, audit seems a pity that it was not written and published then. However, so slow are the movements of Turkey, so almost unchangeable her ways, that Asia Minor and Armenia are probably much the same now—a little better perhaps, or a little worse, but always interesting—as they were when this uncomfortable journey was undertaken.
Mr. Barkley is not much of an artist in writing, and his story suffers sometimes from want of picturesqueness, and from what seems like a good deal of repetition, owing, no doubt, to the monotony of the country he travelled through. Still, this very monotony gives an air of sober truth, and makes us feel that the writer is showing us land and people as they really are. Truly a desolate land, and an unfortunate people ; all the more desolate from its natural riches, wasted by selfish idleness, and from their natural industry, made useless by bad government. Mr. Barkley is not an admirer of the Turk, at least of his ruling classes : he has, on the contrary, a good opinion of the poor people, and especially of the soldiers. But as to Turkish rule in Asia Minor, it is the old story,—corruption everywhere ; and that extraordinary want of enterprise which makes roads and lets them become impassable for want of mending, which even makes a railway now and then, but finds it will not work from some fault in construction, and so leaves the sleepers to rot and the locomotives to rust, as in the case of the attempted line between Moudanieh and Brusa. Turkish law, too, makes property insecure, and a foreigner who buys land in the country is likely to be deprived of it by some ancient claim ; or if he succeeds in keeping it, that is the only success allowed him. Over-taxation and petty persecution of all kinds are employed by the Turkish Government to such an extent that the stranger is almost invariably driven ruined from the country. The Turks are quite blind to any public advantage brought by trade and cultivation ; each official looks only for some private advantage to himself. He would rather have the towns, surrounded by fever-swamps, "sent by God,". than by the cultivated fields of a Christian. If a great official is an honest man, such as Said Pash, he is sent to manage the affairs of some remote town like Angora, where the small officials make life a burden to him, and manage to oripple every reform he attempts. The peasantry of Asia Minor—oppressed, ground down, cheated, tyrannised over throughout their lives—seldom dream of resisting. The only hope expressed by the Armenians was, that one day England or some other Christian nation would rescue them from the hands of the Turks, and give order and prosperity to their miserable country. Throughout his journey, Mr. Barkley found little but ruin and destruction. It would be impossible, on the whole, to paint a more dismal picture of these provinces. All this seems the more lamentable, when we realise the great things that might be done by an enlightened Government with a country such as this. Though now sunk in ignorance and dirt indescribable, the Armenians at least are a people capable of better things ; and as to the country itself, a great part of it is naturally rich and fertile. It is simply neglect and ill-usage that have reduced most of it to the state of a desert. In the wilder parts there is a quantity of game of all kinds. Mr. Barkley recommends the neighbourhood of Yeni Keui, for instance, to English sportsmen who will put up with the rough life of the villages, warning them to avoid
* A Ride through Asia Minor and Armenia. By Henry C. Barkley, Author of Between the Danube and the Black Sea," &o. London John Murray. 1881.
the early autumn, the time of fever. As to beauty of scenery and Nature, we suspect there is a great deal more than he shows us, though he says that in the spring " the whole country is like a well-tended garden, covered by innumerable bright-coloured flowers." By-the-bye, we do not find at the end of his book the two promised chapters by Mr. Elwes on ornithology and botany.
It does not need much imagination to see the beauty of these Eastern plains, though the writer's first description of them is not attractive,—" The apparently never-ending rolling sea of land, treeless, waterless, hideous in its vastness, deso- late, burnt up, brown, and barren." Let us turn to a morning landscape, a little further on :-
" The great undulating plains, that would look burnt up, bare and desolate, under the blaze of the noonday sun, were now bathed in a soft creamy light. Above the river and ravines, fleecy clouds hung suspended, the light from the rising sun tint- ing them and the shadows they cast with indescribably beautiful colours, which changed and changed again each minute as the day grew older. Picturesque groups of Turks, some on horseback, some on foot, moved slowly from the town in all directions to their work in the fields, while by the side of the road some score of men and women, oxen and horses, were busy on a threshing-floor—the animals trampling out the corn, the men and women tossing and sifting the grain from the chaff. Then, in mid-distance, emerging from the river mists, came a long string of camels, with their bright trappings and heavy loads, stalking along in their slow, weird manner, the sound of their pretty tinkling bells growing louder and louder, while the cloud of yellow dust raised by their feet mixed with the morning mists and enhanced the rich beauty of the scene."
We cannot help thinking that, if Mr. Barkley had been inspired with a few more pictures such as this, his book would have had more of the mysterious, irresistible fascination that
must always belong to Eastern travel. That be felt it, we have little doubt, for in spite of all the dirt, discomfort, and
difficulty, the struggles with kaimakams and zaptiehs, the bad food and terrible roads, it is evident that he thoroughly
enjoyed the expedition.
These plains that he describes are by no means always barren. Those in the neighbourhood of Adana, for instance, where the rivers Sethoon and Jaihan run from the Taurus Mountains into the Mediterranean, are more fertile than almost any other part of the country. The soil is rich, and the climate almost tropical. Even under rough and slight cultivation, the crops of wheat, barley, millet, lentils, cotton, &c., are very large. Figs, grapes, sugar-cane, oranges, and date-palms grow easily here. Cotton alone, if grown with any spirit, would make the fortune of the whole dis- trict ; as it is, the people are idle and fever-stricken, and their government cripples what energy they have. Some way to the north-west of this country, in the neigh- bourhood of Diarbekir and the Euphrates, the plain of Kharpout struck the travellers as even more fertile, and cer- tainly better cultivated, than the plain of Adana. Watered by many streams from the mountains, and scattered with
Armenian villages—the people here exerting themselves to some purpose, and setting an example to the indifferent Turks —this plain grows the finest crops of cotton, wheat, and barley, besides groves of poplars by the streams. The villages are miserable, however, the people unhealthy, the animals wretched and under-sized. Even in these most promising parts of the country, civilisation and real progress are far enough away. In the wilder and less fertile parts, the mountains are rich with unworked minerals, while the old forests are being wantonly destroyed by fire. A peasant, when he wants half-an-acre of ground to sow corn, sets fire to the trees and shrubs, which go burning on till thousands of acres are turned into a desert. We need hardly say that the country is full of ruins and relics of the past, traces of the conquerors that anciently swept over it. The town of Corfu, is supposed to be Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham. With all its present misery, few countries have a more distinguished past.
We cannot follow Mr. Barkley through the interesting details of his journey, or into his accounts of Christian
missions and other European attempts to come to the help of Asia Minor. He has much to say about the different races who now people the country, and about its animals,— camels, Arab horses, Angora goats. A ride of fourteen hundred miles was accomplished in fifty-three days, over roads chiefly made of blocks of loose stone, mere mountain-tracks, or causeways never mended ; "and of these fifty-three days, two only were really wet, and two were showery."
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