A group of Armenian Journalists waited upon the governor and heard from his excellency’s own lips a strange theory of a hypothetical feud between the Armenians and the Tartars which might result in a _pogrom_, or massacre. The dangers of such an outbreak, he declared, lay in the fact that he did not have troops enough at his command to suppress any such trouble, and that the police could not be relied upon, owing to the fact that so many of them were themselves Tartars. It was afterward pointed out that the report of the governor, of the outbreak which actually took place, corresponded almost word for word with the supposition advanced by Prince Nakashidze to the journalists previous to the massacre. The massacre actually occurred as a result [Illustration: Arrest of suspected working-men--an hourly incident in Baku] [Illustration: Devastated oil-fields. Baku] of a trifling incident. The body of a murdered Armenian, named Babaieff, was being carried in funeral procession past the Tartar quarter of the city. The sight of this procession aroused the Tartars; and the incident which had led to the death of this man--a purely personal vendetta affair--was taken as an excuse for an attempt to massacre all the Armenians in the city. The Armenians defended themselves for a time, but owing to the fact that the Tartars were in superior numbers and much better armed, the casualties among the Armenians were very heavy. During this attack of the Tartars upon the Armenians, the authorities refused absolutely to bestir themselves or make the slightest effort to end the fight. Prince Nakashidze practically turned a deaf ear upon the delegation of Armenians who appealed to him for help, declaring he had no troops at his command, although there were two thousand men stationed near by, which could easily have been employed to quell the disturbance in its early stages.