Letter written by Rev. C. Henry Holbrook, an American missionary in Sebastia/Sivas in 1912

Sample Pages from the Original Document ["Mr Holbrook had come as a youthful missionary. He was a well-educated and liberal person who immediatly became well-liked. In 1913 he and Avedikian went to Shabin-Kara-Hissar and returned by way of Enderes where he was killed by a stray bullet while resting in a garden. The murderer was never found. Holbrook would take a variety of snapshots when in town. The Turks noticing this became suspicious and killed him" - From Sebastia before Exile: notes by Levon Bodossian of Mexico city - Installment No.6 Nor Sebastia - ]

TURKEY LETTER NO. 2 Being A Rambling Account of My First Tour to Gurun. October 16 - 28 1911.

N.B- I fear this account of a pleasant "little journey" may not exactly meet your ideas of a missionary tour. It does not harrow your feelings with the horrors of heathendom, and it does not chronicle the baptism of converts by the hundred. It merely aims to help you see, as your missionary is trying to see "things as they are", that you may come to understand and love this land and its people as he hopes to understand and love them.

Sivas, Turkey, June 11, 1912.

Dear Friends:      I am afraid that those of you who read my Turkey Letter No. 1 last fall have by this time concluded that the promised series of "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Turk and the New Turk" came to an end with the first number like so many other ambitious literary ventures. The truth is that I have been at work with camera and pen all through this very busy winter gathering material for a letter on Sivas for which I know many of you are waiting eagerly. Several circumstances which have delayed its completion from month to month still make it impossible for me to send now before I start on my long summer of touring, much to my sorrow. Thinking, however, that some of you may like to know how I am spending these summer months of touring amongst our village outstations, I am going to try to get off a short letter to you now describing my first regular tour taken last October to the city of Gurun. Although I am starting out first this summer in a different direction, towards Kara Hissar, the scenes and events of my journey will doubtless be very similar to those I have here to describe, and at the end of the summer it is my hope to repeat the visit to Gurun.      It is perhaps not altogether accurate to call this my first tour, for during my stay in Talas last summer I visited two of the outstations of the Caesarea field, Evkere and Moonjusoon: the former on horseback with the ladies of the station, the latter on donkey back with one of the school boys. I am sorry the pressure of other duties and interests prevented me from writing of these very interesting trips at the time, as many of the odd first experiences with strange village customs are now so much an old story to me that I fear I may forget to tell you some little details that I am sure would interest you. Your first meal and your first night as a guest in a native house is an experience you will never forget. And I can assure you that tour to Moonjusoon, in the sizzling heat of August, for five hours on donkey-back across the low lying, malarial Caesarea Plain, is also an experience I shall not soon forget. It was, however, a most enjoyable trip all in all, for I was alone for three days in a small village with only a schoolboy as companion and plenty of chances to try my tongue at Turkish.      My first official tour, however, as a missionary in the Sivas field was the tour to Gurun of last October, made in company with our preacher in Gurun, Bedros Effendi Moughalian. Bedros Eff. had been touring with Mr. Partridge in the Kara-hissar field and was returning to his parish in Gurun. As I had not yet acquired the beautiful little gray horse who will be my companion on my tours this summer, we made this tour in the luxury of an araba, of whose comforts I have already written you. The picture at the bottom of the preceding page shows our araba with Bedros Eff. standing beside it and our fine young Armenian driver, Messiah, on the seat.      It would be hard to find a more delightful traveling companion than Bedros Eff. He is a man of about 50, has had a wide experience in both educational and evangelistic work in our field, and speaks English remarkably well. He is refined and gentlemanly in taste, genial and sympathetic in temperament, and very efficient in all practical matters. He is highly successful as a preacher, dearly beloved as a pastor, and the friend of everybody. All classes of people, Turks, Armenians, and missionaries, look to him for advice. Many an American pastor might well envy this Armenian bodvelli his ability, influence and success as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. I counted it a rare privilege indeed to be his traveling companion for three days and his guest for a week.      The road to Gurun lies literally over "the top of the world," for it climbs from the 4,500 ft. level of the Sivas plain to nearly 6,600 ft. above sea level, and for the whole three days constantly climbs over bare ridges, from the summits of which the view sweeps off in every direction over miles and miles of mountain peaks to the blue and hazy horizon; one vast wilderness of barren rock without sign of human habitation as far as the eye can see. But it is a wilderness view to make one's blood leap with the exultant joy of boundless freedom. No forest or snow clad mountains in the world can vie with these barren rocks in richness and beauty of color: the red-brown of iron, the gray-green of copper, the pure white of marble, and dead black of coal streak and blend with the grays and browns of granite and limestone to paint a scene of wild but entrancing beauty. Over the chaos of rough, gray crags, eagles circle and swoop. Riotous ridges of rock reach off, break, blend, and blurry into the blue of shimmering distance, while above in the sun-swept blue of the sky white clouds of dazzling brightness drift. One can well understand how Jesus loved to go "into the desert places to rest and pray."      But it is not all barren desert, for in between those ridges that look so desolate there are beautiful green valleys and hillsides covered with sheep. Now and then you will pass a wretched little village of mud houses, filthy and ill kept, but swarming with half-naked children, hens, dogs, donkeys, and fleas. Groups of women in baggy trousers and gay aprons standing in a sunny corner knitting will watch you pass in wondering curiosity. It is always interesting to pass through these villages, especially if you have the opportunity, as I did in the village shown in the last picture, to enter one of their houses and take dinner with them. A meal "a la turc" is quite a novel experience. The whole family sits on the ground cross-legged about a tiny table which stands about six inches above the ground, and on which the food is placed in one big bowl. From this one bowl all eat without knife, fork or spoon, no matter whether it is pilaf, madzoon, or fried eggs swimming in oil. Each one fishes out with a bit of bread what he wishes for each mouthful.      It is not usual, however, to eat in the villages except where you are entertained overnight as a guest. Usually the noon-hour will find you at some wayside khan or perhaps only at a spring by the roadside where all passing wagons and donkeys will stop for a rest and lunch. At the noon-halt shown in this picture, I made quite a reputation as a worker of miracles. It was a sharp, cold day, and the piping-hot cocoa which I had made in the khan before daybreak and brought along in my Thermos-bottle was very welcome indeed; but it was a source of amazement amounting almost to terror to the ignorant Circassian villagers who were eating their meal nearby. They felt the nickel case of the bottle and found it stone cold, yet out of it poured a steaming hot liquid!! These foreigners are devils, anyways!      For those who care for the guidebook style of information, I enclose an extract from Murray's Guidebook, which may contain some items of interest. One of the most interesting places of the journey is the village of Monjuluk where you spend the second night. It is a poor, desolate looking group of mud-houses spread out on a bleak hillside, with beetling cliffs of granite rock above, and wide green fields in the valley below. The dark brown of the winter's wood supply piled like haystacks on the flat roofs of the light brown mud dwellings gives the place a weird picturesqueness that atones a little for the dirt and general disorder. In the smoke and haze of a misty dawn, the place presents a startlingly Whistleresque effect. Monjuluk is one of our outstations. There is a small Protestant community, though the vast majority is Gregorian (there are no Turks). We have a good schoolhouse where you will spend the night with Mirgerios Eff., our teacher and preacher. Though nominally a Gregorian himself, Mirgerios Eff. is in spirit a real evangelical missionary. He is not only the Protestant preacher, but the pastor of the whole village. The ignorant old Gregorian priest opens the little stone church at the head of the valley every Sunday morning and goes through the form of the mass for the little handful who still care enough about it to come, but for the majority of the villagers, Sunday is just like any other day and religion only a race distinction. But many besides the Protestants come eagerly to hear the teacher and count him as their true friend. Not only does he teach a large school full of boys six days in the week and preach on Sundays to their parents, but most of his free time is spent in friendly helpfulness in their homes, and his rooms in the schoolhouse are the social center of the village. Throughout the long cold evenings of winter, a warm hospitable light streams from his windows into the starlit darkness of the village streets, and the gay strains of his violin lure many a lonesome villager in for an evening of song, games, or stories. He is a voracious reader when he can get literature to devour. Packages of books from our libraries in Sivas and back numbers of the Congregationalist and other magazines find their way to him now and then and furnish material from which he gleans many tales of the great outside world to relate on long winter evenings to a very attentive crowd of listeners. This is frontier missionary work, and if the love and confidence of his flock is any criterion, it is very fruitful and rewarding work.      One more day across these sun and wind swept ridges brings you to Gurun. Late in the afternoon as your horses plod wearily along over a lofty, bare, and sun-scorched plateau from which in every direction the wild ridges of desert rock sweep off twenty, thirty, forty miles into the haze of wilderness distance, the question arises in your head: "Where is the end of all this desolation? Will there be no shelter for the night?" For as far as the eye can see there is no sign of human habitation, scarcely even a wind-bent tree as refuge for man or beast. You put your question to the driver. "Why, Gurun is just ahead there." "What in that little crevice between those bare ridges, that looks like the canyon of a small mountain torrent? " And canyon it proves to be, for suddenly there is spread out a thousand feet below you a long, winding paradise of trees through which leaps and sparkles a clear cold mountain torrent. At one point where the valley broadens out a bit, silver-tipped minarets and the red-brown tiles of many roofs rise above the forest greenness. For nine miles up and down the narrow valley well-kept vineyards creep far up the steep, gravelly hillside, and the white walls of vineyard houses gleam amidst their orchard trees.      Gurun is a veritable Garden of Eden. I shall never forget the balmy Indian summer days I spent there last fall. The trees were ablaze with all their autumn glory of red and gold. The clear, bright water danced and sang in the sunlight. Tall poplars leaned in graceful friendliness over the crumbling gray walls that lined on either hand the quiet rambling lanes amongst the vineyards. Soft brown fallen leaves spread a rustling carpet everywhere and cruised like fairy boats on the foaming flood of the stream. The isolated vineyard houses had an air of peaceful contentment and comfort. Happy, indeed, must be the fortunate people who live in such a garden spot as this! Yet even a few days was enough to show me that most of the people were wretchedly poor and ignorant, and that sickness and sorrow was widely prevalent. In massacre days some of the worst atrocities were committed here.      The parsonage where I was a guest for a week is a typical vineyard house set back up the slope from the river and commanding a beautiful view over the tops of the trees up and down the valley. The picture at the top of the next page was taken from the corner window shown in this picture. The great granite cliff visible above the tops of the trees marks the head of the valley and the mouth of the gorge out of which this torrent flows. On the face of this cliff, in huge bold letters, an ancient Hittite inscription is cut. Time has obliterated much of it, but the strange undeciphered Hieroglyphics still attest the prehistoric fame of this wonderful valley. By many, this is believed to have been a capital of the ancient Hittite kings.      My week in Gurun was spent partly in wandering to my heart's content along these shady vineyard lanes by the riverside, partly in visiting in many of these vineyard homes, partly in "sitting" in the little shops of the merchants in the market. It is very interesting indeed to "sit" in these tiny shops where little knots of merchants gather to gossip about the news of the day and drink Turkish coffee. The war was the chief topic. Just then the telegrams were arriving daily with exciting news of Italy's aggressions. Much of it was false and exaggerated, but it served to pass the time of day. It was an excellent opportunity for me to catch the Oriental spirit, and excellent for my Turkish also.      We have two communities in Gurun: one in the market-end of town known as Kara-tepe (Black hill), the other out among the vineyards in Shoughoul. In each we have a church and a boys' and girls' school. The picture opposite is of the Shoughoul chapel and school. The little stone chapel in front is very simple but tasteful inside - it is the best Protestant chapel in our field. The square mud-plaster annex on the rear provides for a boys' school and teachers' room upstairs and a girls' school downstairs. It is one of the cleanest and lightest schools I have seen. Graduates of the Sivas Normal and Girls' School teach in all of these Gurun schools, and are doing a splendid work in the community. On Sunday I preached, of course, through an interpreter in both ends of the town. It was indeed with keen regret that I said good-bye to my delightful hosts and toiled up the steep hillside to the wilderness world above for the homeward journey.      I am not addicted to diaries and have rarely in my life been guilty of a day's journal, but on the last day of my return journey, arriving unusually early at the khan and being in a rather poetical mood after a perfect day of rest and enjoyment in the araba, I occupied part of the time between supper and bedtime in scribbling the following "impressions" on some odd scraps of paper I had with me. Although I very much fear it will prove tediously long-winded and high-flown, I am going to copy it just as it is in the hope that the pictures of a khan at night may prove interesting enough to repay you for wading through so many words.

Tejer Khan, October 27, 1911.

After another one of these gloriously lazy days in the araba, driving leisurely across these bare but beautiful mountain plateaus - where range on range of sun-kist mountain ridges fade away in the distant haze of gray and blue, and where the dazzling cloud-battalions drift in the dreamiest of autumn skies - after such a day of rest and refreshment of body and soul, the busy hum of a crowded khan at night is a strange, but not unwelcome, contrast.      Our day today was a short one - seven hours only from Monjuluk - so we were almost the first araba to drop down the rough road that rolls into the pleasant valley amongst the desert hills where, in its beautiful little park of yellowing poplars, the large, low khan spreads out its rough stone walls. It is truly a trim and stately avenue by which we approached - a well-built stone-wall on either side of the road, and in front of the wall a straight and unbroken line of tall, graceful poplars whose rich brown fallen leaves spread a gently rustling carpet underneath our wheels. It is well we were early, for hardly were we within the large low gate and my goods deposited in one of the best rooms that open their generous windows toward the little poplar-shaded lawn and the wild craggy mountain that rises so abruptly just across the road - than down the opposite hill-road from Sivas came a long steady stream of common-load arabas, simply packed with men and one or two women. They are mostly "hamals" (men who carry loads on their backs) returning to their homes in Harpoot and Malatia after six months or a year's work in Constantinople. They would look like a rough, uncouth lot in America, and they are men of the poorer class morally as well as financially doubtless, but somehow I do not so often size up these men as vicious or repulsive as I would many of our East-Side citizens of old New York. I counted sixteen arabas in all, besides several horseback riders, and when you count five or six as an average for each araba you can see this lonely little khan in the mountain valley is quite a populous community. Counting the horsemen and the Khanji's family and helpers there are surely over one hundred within these walls tonight! There are only eight or ten rooms but as few care to pay the fee for a room (20 cents!) we are not crowded. I have mine (10x14, high and airy) all to myself - but just across the way they are packed into the large general room like sardines.      As the wagons streamed into the muddy courtyard, which they had jammed full by now, I sat by the gate in truly oriental fashion, sipping my delicious Turkish coffee and watching with eager interest the faces and actions of these oddly dressed human brothers. A few came and sat near me, eyeing me with naïve curiosity, and at length venturing the universal questions: "How are you? Where are you coming from? Where are you going?", and then relapsing again into a half-wondering, half-suspicious silence.      It was only about four p.m. when we arrived, so, after watching the bustle of unloading for a while, I strolled out through and beyond the little avenue of poplars that glowed so softly in the late afternoon light and enjoyed a fine brisk walk far out on the lonely road that ran through the bare, bleak valley. It has been a most unusual day for late October - one of those warm, still, languid days of Indian summer that bring back the luxurious laziness of real summer to your blood, yet somehow fills you with a grateful vigor of body, and a hopeful, buoyant, exhilarating strength of spirit. The sunset clouds tonight were not brilliant but marvelously beautiful in their masses of smooth soft slate with here and there a rift through which the clear light streamed - while over in the north, above the bare blue ridge of a distant range, stretched a most enchanting vista of soft violet and rose superbly blended. The sunset colorings in this high, desert atmosphere surpass anything I have seen elsewhere.      By the time I returned to the khan, with its slender poplars outlined black against the eastern sky, the young crescent of a moon was casting faint, soft shadows on the rustling leaves that strewed the road. Already the dim lamps cast their welcome light from the open windows of the khan, and from the open door of the khan-kitchen came the appetizing odor of steaming pilaf. Messiah (my arabaji) and I had our simple supper in my room - fresh boiled eggs, delicious Gurun bread, English raspberry jam, and hot cocoa made this morning in Monjuluk (thanks to my thermos bottle).      After supper I wandered about, or rather climbed, amongst the wagons in the yard, watching a few latecomers cooking their supper in a corner on the ground, or peering into the dim twilight of the stable where the arabajis were feeding and bedding their horses for the night. Most of these men take excellent care of their horses. But the most interesting spot in this khan tonight is that crowded public room across the way where sixty or seventy men are squatting in circles on the floor, smoking cigarettes, gambling with ten-para pieces (1 cent), or talking in low tones. Only two small, dingy lamps and the dull red glow of the fire cast any light through the murky darkness of the smoke-filled room, but it is just enough to give a weird setting to the picturesque scene. The men are not boisterous or noisy or disorderly, as sixty men in one little room in America would almost surely be. There is no drinking - at least there is no bar or visible liquor - and as long as I stayed and have watched them many nights before, there were no quarrels or heated arguments. It is all very quiet, peaceful and sleepy - as is the khan in general. A few minutes more out under the clear, quiet stars and the soft young moon, and here I am in my cozy room ready for a fine night's sleep myself.

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Everything was so still and quiet as I laid my pencil down a moment ago that I went out to explore just for curiosity. In the quiet yard I found only one or two belated travelers preparing to crawl into their wagons for the night. I nearly stumbled over a flock of geese asleep behind a wagon - and got properly scolded for my carelessness I assure you. In the general room all was quiet - every man rolled up in his yorghan asleep except one or a group of five or six still quietly talking over their cigarettes. Even the stars, too, seemed to have drawn up their coverlets and gone to sleep, for a dim gray vapor has overspread most of the sky, leaving only here and there a stretched of clear, star-strewn vault. So, though it is only eight-thirty p.m., I, too, most spread out my blankets and yorghans on this good wide couch and bid you "good-night!"

Sources: ABCFM (American board of commissioners for Foreign Missions) at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Special thanks to Florence Chakerian who provided us with this document.

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