After staying a couple of days in Alexandretta and partaking of the hospitality of the United States Vice-Consul we embarked on board a steamer bound for Constantinople. During the uneventful voyage we had ample leisure to review the impressions gained on our expedition, some of which, though they are not free from sundry repetitions, I have jotted down in the following chapter. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII SUMMARY OF OUR JOURNEY Truth is established by investigation and delay; falsehood prospers by precipitancy. TACITUS MARK TWAIN in one of his entertaining books tells us that his travelling party was dirty at Constantinople, dirtier at Damascus, but dirtiest at Jerusalem. Our party had already obtained the Jerusalemic stage of uncleanliness, and consequent ungodliness, a few days after leaving Erzeroum. We passed through close upon eight hundred miles of country sporadically inhabited by Armenians, still living, however poorly, in the midst of Circassians, Kurds, Arabs, Turcomans, and Turks. We saw them “alive” in their villages. We met them travelling alone along the high road without any escort or arms, the women now and then riding on horseback astride like men. We conversed with innumerable Armenians, priests and bishops of whole districts among the rest, and were assured by them that in such and such a district no outrages, no violence, no molestation whatsoever, even though revolutionists were about, had taken place. Lastly, our Armenian cook rode for hundreds of miles ahead of us quite alone, unarmed, and never encountered the slightest enmity, even far less than he might if he alighted as a stranger on horseback among the miners in some Christian community. And yet these Armenian agitators do not hesitate to assert that the Moslem Turk is bent on the extermination of their race. An even more untenable statement is that the Armenians are a “nation,” and as such are entitled to autonomy. The Armenians are not a nation, but an Asiatic race among many other races forming remnants of independent states in olden times. If half, or perhaps three-quarters of a million of Asiatic Armenians, now sporadically distributed over an area half the size of Europe, form a _nation_, what are we to say of the five million Russian Jews cooped up within the pale assigned to them by the Russian Government? Why does not Europe take up their case? What answer would Europe get from Holy Russia if she did so? But this does not exhaust the question. The ethical sentiment of Europe, rightly or wrongly, but in every case armed with enormous power, steps in and says: “Even if these facts are admitted, they do not excuse, much less justify, Turkey in using the means she adopted to crush a rebellion in