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Show JjL older QVer the World's Oldest Route The Ancient Highway Across Mesopotamia Mesopo-tamia Will Again Be a Main Artery of Trade and Travel. BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS. Crfa, Mesopotamia. To this city, the ancient Edessa, I have come from Aleppo, over the route taken by countess count-ess armies of conquest Turkish, Arab, Crusader, Persian, Roman, Grecian, Gre-cian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian. Abraham came over the same route to the Promised Land. Jonah went (his way, after trying to go In the ether eth-er direction. The heart-broken procession pro-cession of Jewish captives came Into c-slle over this same stony road. Now, In the same general direction are pointed the German Bagdad railway Md the American Chester railway project Urfa Itself was long regarded as "Ur of the Chaldees," from which Abraham Abra-ham came. It has many traditional associations with him. The Arabs say that he was such a good man that the people of" Urfa tried to make him stay --".. Iff I - i "Vj-i.;' ..ft. .. - -."- . .. rt- ,. ! . - fr.bki t:te-o....,.- X j V here and become their king, Instead of ? jolng to Canaan. When he persisted I ttey finally took him up to the crest of j the hill, which la now crowned by the ' ruins of a castle of unknown antiquity, and threw him down. He was miraculously mirac-ulously preserved, and landed on his feet Where each foot struck there gushed forth a beautiful fountain and there are the lovely Pools of Abraham to this day. They are filled with fish regarded by the Moslems as sacred, and so tame that they fairly crowd one another out of the water at the approach of a person, whom they eipect to feed them. So thick are the fish that I yanked a big fellow out of the water by the crook of my cane which proceeding I was advised not to repeat, as the Moslems here are very fanatical. A few hours below here Is Harran, where Abraham dwelt for a time after leaving the city of Ur, down below be-low Babylon. Here he sent for a wlfe" for his son, and Rebecca's well Is a favorite place of resort for pious Moslems. Mos-lems. Its genuineness is quite probable, prob-able, considering the unquestioned antiquity of many wells In Asia, j An American Woman's Fame. Looming larger than even Father Abraham in modern Urfa la Mi6s Shattuck, Shat-tuck, a missionary of the American board, who spent about thirty years of her life here, until her death last 'prlng. Miss Shattuck was an ex-J ex-J traordlnary Instance of how an Amerl-I Amerl-I can woman of force can carve out a unique career for herself in a foreign land. Her name Is easily the best-known best-known in the city, and all the varied work of the American mission 6tlll goes by it. She was the head of the municipal school board, as well as the manager of a series ' of Industrial schools maintained by the mission, and an elaborate system of home Industries In-dustries by Armenian women who had lost their husbands In the 1896 massacre. massa-cre. She also ran an orphanage and a blind school, and did direct missionary mission-ary work besides. ' For the past twenty years this Spartan Spar-tan Massachusetts woman did her work with only one lung. Yet she spared herself no rigors. She slept on a native bed In her office, and lived mostly on native food. When traveling travel-ing she would share her fare with the muleteers. She has been known to drop all her work. In order to nurse a native boy through the crisis of the smallpox. Still, she had plenty of dignity dig-nity when occasion called for It. A missionary who was visiting her wanted want-ed to go to Rebecca's Well, but the governor refused, out of pure cussed-ness, cussed-ness, to send the escort of soldiers to which foreigners are entitled when traveling in dangerous parts of the empire. Miss Shattuck, with flashing eyes, put on her hat and coat and marched straight into the mutasarlf's presence, when he was holding a council. coun-cil. In vigorous Turkish, she demanded de-manded an explanation of the insult to her guest. In true oriental fashion, the governor blamed it all on the military mili-tary official, cursing the latter, and , Typical Scene In Mesopotamia. spitting in his face, In the presence of the other counsellors! Withal, Miss Shattuck was only a woman, and in Turkey, where women have no standing. The recent massacre massa-cre of Armenians broke her heart, and hastened her death. She cried over it almost continuously, after the news reached her. Armenians and Revolution. There are those In this part of the world who bluntly say that the Armenians Armeni-ans are not worth any such sacrifice as Miss Shattuck and a host of other American missionaries have made for them. Up here, on the edge of the ancient an-cient kingdom of Armenia, the Armenian Ar-menian is a perennial question. He Is nimble witted far more so than any of his neighbors progressive and prosperous. He gets along better than the Turk or the Kurd or the Jew. But he Is, as a rule, proud, ungrateful, Belflsh and irritating. Instead of trying try-ing to live at peace with his neighbors, neigh-bors, he is provokingly presuming. When he cannot be that, he is cringing. For those who have done most for him, he is charged with having no feelings of friendliness or gratitude. All these criticisms which I am repeating re-peating are certainly too general to be true In all cases. Apparently, it Is true that the Armenian Ar-menian is so keen at looking out for number' one that he cannot pull together to-gether with his fellows. So there are many parties and organizations among x them, since the Revolution. Some ar frankly aimed at the overthrow of Turkish power. Others take the side of the Turks. A vigorous socialistic propaganda Is in full swing here, with apparently all extravagances that ever accompany socialism. Without discrimination, what is new is adopted. So the Armenians In this region have gone In for trades unionism, and they exult In their power. By exhorbltant demands, they have Closed up many places of business permanently. Ten baker. shops were put out of business here recently within a single week. A Land of Ruins. Ruins, ruins, ruins, are the characteristic charac-teristic of the hard journey between this city and Aleppo. Even the soil, so rich In possibilities, is In a state of ruin. The traveler grows indifferent to ruins that would make the fortune of any city in Europe. It Is necessary to ride in arabas, which are small spring wagons, opening at the sides, and covered like a prairie schooner. Without baggage, or if content to go at an araba's pace, one may ride horseback. The nights are spent la khans, and these afford no accommodation accommo-dation except the shelter of a bare room, without bed, table or chair. The foreigner, if he arrives early enough, can generally secure a room to himself, him-self, such as It is, and not reckoning the ever-present vermin. Some of the road3 are fair; some stretches are worse than the worst America knows. Most of the traffic-is traffic-is by donkey and camel caravans, and these patient beasts, with their deep-sounding deep-sounding and musical bells, bearing great loads of hemp and grain, may be passed at all hours of the day and night. They travel in companies, for mutual protection. Foreigners are expected ex-pected to have an escort of one or more zeptlehs, or soldiers, but these unkempt fellows are a nuhsance, and mere petty grafters. No American would count much on the protection of one of them. A zeptleh-of mine dropped his rifle in the road and a wagon ran over It! He wanted me to buy him a new one. Highwaymen Out of Work. This region in the past has been famous for its lawlessness. Here it was that David Fraser, a London journalist, jour-nalist, was shot by an Arab, a short time ago. Everybody goes armed, and a good part of the foreigner's protection is the display of his modern mod-ern weapons. The Arabs at the crossing cross-ing of the Euphrates are a particularly particular-ly villainous looking lot. The worst of them all wore a ministerial frock coat, along with his other raiment, beneath be-neath his Arabian abeyah. This particular thug with the frock coat carried, In plain sight, a dagger, a sword, a pistol and a shot gun. He turned out to be an officer of the ham-Idieh, ham-Idieh, or irregular police, and he assured as-sured me that I was safe under his protection, a gratuitous remark that did not elicit the expected backsheesh. It is true that the road Is notably safer, since the advent of the new regime at Constantinople. It used to be that Ibrahim Pasha, the great Kurdish shlek, had a name higher than the governments hereabouts. herea-bouts. He terrorized the whole country, coun-try, destroying entire villages at his pleasure. Of course, he paid backsheesh back-sheesh to Abdul Hamld, who winked at his highwaymanry. From all that I can learn, Ibrahim Pasha played a fairer game than the sultan. He had thirty thousand men under his command, com-mand, and ruled them with an iron hand. The Young Turks properly decided de-cided that there could be but one power pow-er In a civilized government, so they broke Ibrahim Pasha's sway by measures meas-ures more severe than any he ever adopted. He was slain, his sons imprisoned im-prisoned and his family practically extirpated, ex-tirpated, while the villages of many of his followers were destroyed, with the rapine and cruelty for which the Turk is noted. (Copyright. 1911. by Joseph B. Bowles.) |