Ararat
Elgin Groseclose
Pocket
On the twenty-eighth day of November, in the year 1895, the dark angels of tragedy, roaming the Eastern world, alighted upon the town of Dilijan, Turkey. The town of Dilijan lay in one of the eastern sanjaks of Anatolia, not far from the Russian border, in a secluded valley, remote from the outside world, and little touched by the currents of large affairs. The shadow had already fallen upon other parts of the Empire, and the cold winds of death and destruction had been set in motion; but the mountains that lay between Dilijan and the westerly portions of Anatolia had until now screened it and its inhabitants from the blasts.
The predominant community of Dilijan was the Armenian; it numbered some eight thousand souls. There were a slightly smaller number of Turks, and a sprinkling of Kurds, Syrians, Jews and other races. Dilijan was not, therefore, a large place. It might have been destroyed, or it might have continued to exist, and the difference in the then vastness ... |