About 1892 Sultan Abdul Hamid called the Kurdish chiefs to Constantinople and supplied them with military titles, uniforms, and modern weapons of war, and sent them back to organize their tribes into “Hamidieh” cavalry regiments, which numbered about twenty-two thousand and five hundred men. The Sultan thus “obtained a power eager in time of peace _to crush the Armenian growth and spirit_.” The Armenians “besought the protection of the co-signatory powers to the Berlin guarantees against the ruthless oppression of the lawless and ruffianly Kurds, _and with the tacit consent, if not the approbation of the powers_, the Porte now appoints their worst enemies as their guardians.” A few fragmentary instances may show what these--the government’s--licensed robbers and murderers have done. The following is part of a letter written by an American missionary in the summer of 1892 from Southern Armenia: “We journeyed east of north over the hills, and dropped down into another valley, in the bosom of which nestled the Armenian village of Khundik, of about twenty houses. It was a charming spot, but the oppression of surrounding Kurdish begs (chiefs) was depleting the population. Their church has been reduced to a heap, and they were not allowed to restore it.” Dr. ----, a medical missionary, writing of his tour under date of October 20, 1892, stated: “It was somewhat risky going among the Arabkir villages. Robberies were of almost daily occurrence, and the villagers were in a state of constant alarm at night on account of the raids of the Kurds.... The village of Horesik is in a district of perhaps thirty Armenian villages; but it is one of the most oppressed districts in the empire. A long time ago some Turkish feudal chiefs came from abroad, and gradually gained possession of the whole district. They now claim to own all the land, and even the houses which the people occupy, and which the occupants built, and the gardens and vineyards which they planted.” It was not the Kurds, and some Turkish feudal chiefs alone, but the officers of the government who carry the sword for the punishment of the evil-doer were also among the worst kind of tormentors and evil-doers themselves. “October, 1892: At all the villages on the lake (Van) soldiers were stationed to keep boats from landing, on account of cholera.... Then the quartering of the soldiers in the villages. You can imagine what that means for the poor Armenians, you can sympathize with them in the idea that the cure is worse than the disease; that they would much rather take the risk of having the cholera than have the soldiers about. And it is not only the soldiers and underpaid gendarmes that oppress the villagers, extorting the best and making no return. An officer, the captain of one thousand, with seven horsemen, had just been at a village we visited. They and their horses were fed with the best and went off without paying anything.”