#1: From New York to Merzifon (1890)
We sailed from New York on the Scotch steamer Furnessia,
October 11, caught glimpses of Glasgow with its shipbuilding
on the Clyde, of aristocratic Edinburgh with its famous
university, and of mighty London and the perennially friendly
and generous Bible Lands Missions Aid Society. A visit to
Parliament, where we saw the statue of John Selden, an alleged
ancestor, in the hallway, almost made us feel as if we owned
the place, and certainly prepared us to reciprocate the
friendliness and cooperation of British friends and officials
during succeeding years. We crossed the continent by trains
with no sleeping car and made initial acquaintance with
cosmopolitan Constantinople, then and naturally, the capital
of the Near-eastern world, and we were especially glad to
meet the hospitable Americans at the Bible House and at
Robert College. Then came the small Russian steamer, Rostoff,
with its characteristic crowd of deck passengers: Armenian
rug merchants, Persians with their samovars and tea parties,
muscular Kurdish porters, Turkish hucksters, Greek colonizers,
Caucasian mountaineers with their daggers and cartridge
bandoliers, and stalwart Russians commanding and respected
by all.
So we reached Samsoun, and after some pushing through the
slow moving Custom House and through other formalities on
a Friday morning packed ourselves and our belongings into
small, springless, seatless carts, quite like pocket editions
of the covered wagons familiar to us on our western prairies.
After bumping over rough, stone-paved roads till nightfall
and far beyond, we met our first experience of an Oriental
khan at Cavak. Before noon the next day at Cavsa, famous
from classic times for its therapeutic hot spring, a group
of thirteen young men met us. They were the senior class
of the College, and as we shook hands with "our students",
and heard the address given by J. P. Xenides, (later
Professor) and Kevork Chakarian (later Reverend), we began
to feel "at home". Soon some of the Americans came galloping
up, followed at intervals by crowds on foot or with
miscellaneous conveyances, all with a hearty welcome for
the new-comers. The approach to the city resembled the
approach to Jerusalem over the Mt. of Olives, and just
where the cavalcade emerged from among 5,000 vineyards and
orchards, the city lay spread out to view westward across
"the brook". There a halt was called, introductions and
cordial greetings were exchanged, and then in the autumn
twilight our wagons rolled into the compound of the Mission
Station and the campus of Anatolia College.
NEXT: The college and the town
(1891)
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