With the Assyrian tribesmen in the mountains the crisis had not developed so rapidly. The Turks themselves were anxious to defer it. Indeed, there is no valid reason to doubt that they would have liked to evade it altogether. This knot of hardy mountaineers ensconced in their rocky fastnesses were far more difficult to eradicate than ten times their number of Armenians--poor, spiritless hucksters and husbandmen dispersed in open villages and towns. There was little spoil to be won from them--many more hard knocks than ha'pence--and the force that would be needed to subdue them was wanted rather urgently elsewhere. Moreover, if they could only be cajoled into complacency they might prove quite a useful asset later as independent witnesses to character. The Armenian massacres were now really beginning, and the Turks were inflexibly resolved to persist in them to the uttermost. There could come no protests from Europe, but perhaps from America there might--and the presence of American missionaries in the country rendered it impossible for the facts to be altogether hid. It would be but prudent accordingly to prepare a line of apology, and to invest with some faint plausibility the plea that this monstrous holocaust had been "exaggerated," and that such "repressive measures" as had been adopted were really no more than were necessary to quell an incipient revolt. Such a plea might gain valuable corroboration from the fact that another Christian _millet_, living in the same provinces and under the same conditions as the Armenians, had nevertheless continued loyal to their suzerains, and had seen in the Turks' proceedings no cause of apprehension for themselves. On military grounds also the mountaineers were worth conciliating; for, if Turkish Armenia were invaded, this little garrison on their flank might sensibly hamper the defenders. Thus, quite high bids were made for what the Turks called Assyrian loyalty, and what the Assyrians (clinging fondly to their traditional but shadowy independence) preferred to style alliance. Their Patriarch, their bishops, and their chiefs were all to be salaried. They were to be armed. They were to be allowed absolute freedom for education. And many of the Assyrian leaders felt certainly much tempted to clinch the bargain, and to adopt what (on the face of things) seemed manifestly the safer course.