From the foregoing history it will easily be understood that the Armenians have been subjected to all kinds of cruelties. Owing to calamitous wars, merciless persecutions, voluntary and involuntary exiles, and emigrations into different countries, they have been justly compared to the Jews. Like them scattered all over the globe the Armenians are met with in every commercial city throughout Europe and Asia. However, until the beginning of 1915 the great majority of them still dwelled in the land of Ararat in the Turkish empire. There were over two hundred thousand Armenians in the city of Constantinople, and as many in other European countries. The number of the Armenians in Turkish Armenia and in Asia Minor was not considered to be below two millions and a half.[69] The Armenians lived (before this world war) in their respective villages, towns and cities. If a town, or village is not exclusively occupied by the Armenians, then they had their own district clustered by themselves with sufficient churches and schools for their religious and educational needs. The dwellings in the villages and towns are of primitive style in the interior being built either of unhewn stone entirely, or half of stone and half of sun-dried bricks. The roofs are flat. Large logs or beams are laid crosswise, supported by strong pillars. These are covered with planks and earth to a thickness of two or three feet, and then hardened to prevent leaking. But in spite of all sometimes “through idleness of lands, the house droppeth through.”[70] Some of these villages are built on the hillsides, and the roofs of the lower row of houses are on the level with the streets above, or with the yards of the houses above. Some travelers, careless in their observations or basing their statements on the information of others, betray incorrectness in their assertions in regard to them when they say that “the inhabitants are literally dwelling under ground.” The villagers and some dwellers in towns were and are (what is left of them in Asia Minor) exclusively engaged in agricultural pursuits and the raising and tending of cattle and sheep, their land and fold, being within a distance of several miles from the villages and towns. The farmers go to their fields of labor in the morning early and return in the evening to their homes. They could not do like the farmers in this country, live on or near their farms on account of insecurity of life and property. The Turkish government had determined for years to expose the Armenians to all manner of oppressions, thefts, plunders and murders perpetrated by the Circassians, Kurds and Turks, especially the former two, who have been human parasites on the Christian inhabitants of Turkey.