Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/186

180 colonies could not prevent them from the search and accumulation of wealth. They transported the silky wool and superior hides of Armenia to the markets of Egypt, and brought the costly indigo blue to the doors of Armenian dyers. They put the delicious pistacio nuts in the French confectioneries, and exchanged the money for delicate European dry goods; hunted all the old rugs from the oriental parlors and furnished the halls of the United States with them. The Armenians of the Harpoot district, mostly common laborers in the New England factories, were known to send to their friends $5,000 weekly to purchase acres of land from their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors.

There was a commercial revival among the Armenians. The young men, more vigorous than their conservative fathers, took out the buried treasures and began a strong competition with the Moslems, and succeeded. The big-turbaned Turk and the ragged Kurd, together with the barefooted Arab, began to ask the way to the Armenian banks to borrow money for their antediluvian plowing work, at the same time sighing in their souls and murmuring in each other's ears, "I wish I had the giaour's mind and wealth."

The young Armenian minds enlightened with "the modern civilization," began to think that the gunpowder stores of the Turk were emptied, and that the sharp teeth of Tartaric brutality had becomes dull, and especially that the originators and protectors of the modern civilization would never allow