The economical condition of the surrounding country is woeful in the extreme. The great plains from Pasin to Lake Van were being raided by bands of Kurds. I shall describe in a future chapter how this predatory people came to be established in the agricultural centres. Erzerum was full of accounts of their open attacks upon the industrious peasantry; and even the Mussulmans, as, for instance, at Hasan Kala in Pasin, were petitioning Government for protection. It is true they did not dare to call their assailants to book as Kurds, but described them merely as brigands. It was well known that these bands were led by officers in Hamidiyeh regiments--tenekelis, or tin-plate men, as they are called by the populace, from the brass badges they wear in their caps. The frightened officials, obliged to report such occurrences, take refuge behind the amusing euphemism of such a phrase as "brigands, disguised as soldiers." The scourge had almost exhausted the Armenian population, and was now commencing to sit heavy upon the Mussulmans. The Armenians were emigrating as fast as they could. The Russian Consul informed me that he had been obliged to issue no less than 3500 passports to Armenians during the current year. The Russians did not want them; but what were they to do? I learnt from another source that in the caza of Khinis alone 1000 Armenians had left their homes, the majority in abject poverty, and had taken refuge across the frontier. With a famine in the provincial capital and the adjacent territory stripped by marauders, the inhabitants of any other country would have risen in revolt against the Government. But the population of Asiatic Turkey, in spite of religious differences, are the most easily governed in the world. All the talk about Mussulmans and Christians flying at each other's throat is talk, and moreover very idle talk. During my subsequent visits to Erzerum it was admitted to me by Turkish officials that the massacres of 1898 were perpetrated in these districts by bands of imported ruffians. The still unavenged guilt of these abominable orgies does not lie upon the Mussulman population. Only on one occasion during my residence did the famished townspeople of the dominant religion come near to measures of insubordination. They sent their women--a method of petition which is neither usual nor lightly to be dismissed--in a body to Government House. Thence the petitioners proceeded to the residence of an official of the Treasury at Constantinople, who had been despatched to Erzerum to make enquiries into the scarcity. The indignant matrons assailed his ears with the pertinent question: neye geldin, whereto didst thou come? Dissatisfied with the answer they received, they smashed the windows of the functionary; but nothing came of the demonstration.