The size of the Armenian population of Asiatic Turkey has never been accurately determined. The inaccuracy of Turkish statistics is notorious. Furthermore the boundaries of Turkish administrative provinces have been drawn with the sole view of creating groups in which the Mohammedan element would predominate. The estimate of 2,100,000 Armenians for Asiatic Turkey given by so reputable a writer as Major-General Sir Charles Wilson[235] is undoubtedly high. Cuinet’s figures given by Selenoy and Seidlitz[236] probably come nearer the truth. The wholesale massacre of Armenian males which has been systematically conducted by the Turks for the past twenty years and which culminated in the massacres and deportations of the past two years, makes it improbable that over 1,000,000 Turkish Armenians still live. Prior to the European war, the only districts of any size in which they constituted a majority of the population were found west of Nimrud Dagh in the plains surrounding Mush as well as in the Kozan district north of the Cilician plains.[237] [Illustration: _The American Geographical Society of New York_ _Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, 1917, Pl. VIII_ DISTRIBUTION OF ARMENIANS IN TURKISH ARMENIA] THE KURDS An Alpine zone of transition connecting the plains of northern Mesopotamia with the surrounding mountains on the north and east became the homeland of the Kurds. In a broad sense it is the drainage area of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is also the site of important mountain gaps through which human movements from east to west or vice versa have proceeded. Before the consolidation of Turkish authority in this region, a matter of less than a century ago and still in an imperfect stage of completion, Kurdish clans, each under the sole leadership of their respective Chieftains, controlled the pass through which traffic from the southern lowlands or the eastern plateau was directed towards the Anatolian table-land. They exacted heavy tolls from passing caravans and derived their chief source of revenue from these levies. Their manner of living conforms with the intermediary character of their habitat. The semi-nomads of the plains and southern hills seek cool uplands during the summer months. In winter they descend to the warm plains with their flocks and herds and mingle with their Arab neighbors. Their instinct for seasonal migrations has been developed to such an extent that they cannot refrain from maintaining their semi-annual movements in the Armenian districts to which they have been forcibly removed by the Turkish government, desirous of insuring Mohammedan predominance in the Christian valleys of Armenia.