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44 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
hard at work again. Similarly, down in the town, if at a
bend of a narrow street we came unexpectedly upon an old
woman talking to a child, the black veil was at once raised in
front of her wrinkled face, though we had no eyes save for
the child, who was a perfect vision of loveliness.
The means of transport here was the human back, and we
stood for a long time watching the various powerful types of
carriers on the beach. They carried up big sacks of flour,
ground from American wheat in Constantinople and now
discharged at this place. To think that this fertile country,
with room and soil enough, if tilled, to support many times
its present population, should import corn and flour from
America, and send back in exchange the American tobacco
plant ! We live in a strange world.
A number of passengers, mostly men, came on board to
go with us to Trebizond. They were said to be mostly
Kurds. It was quite touching to see them taking leave of
their relations who came to see them off—at parting the men
kissed each other on both sides of the mouth. Some were
fine, powerful fellows, obviously of the same stock as many
of the carriers on shore. Strange people these Kurds, who
are supposed to be partly of Aryan—some even say of Nordic
—origin. Their language is akin to Iranian. I cannot say
that the majority of these looked much like our people at
home. A few had brown hair, it is true, and possibly bluish
eyes ; but most of their faces struck me as foreign and
Oriental—some Semitic with long hooked noses and swarthy
complexions, others more like Russian Tartars with prominent
cheek-bones and long beards, black, grey or white, while
one was as dark-complexioned as a Hindu.
It was, indeed, a motley crowd of different nationalities
that swarmed on our deck. The solemn Turks sitting
for’ard in a circle were seemingly merchants discussing their
business. Amidships we had a throng of all sorts of people :
Persians with their white robes with fluttering ends, looking
as if they had put their shirts on outside ; stoical Kurds with
big beards sitting motionless on their chattels ; Semitic types
with long grey wisdom-beards, hooked noses and white
turbans—as though the patriarchs Abraham and Isaac had
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