The history of Armenia is a history at once ancient, romantic, tragic and instructive. One of the peoples early mentioned in the Old Testament, the Armenians have maintained themselves for thousands of years, in a region close to the birthplace of mankind and associated historically with the greatest of the cataclysms which have afflicted the world, the Noahic Deluge. That God, in His providence, should have preserved them as a people through so many centuries and amidst such changeful circumstances of peace and war, joy and sorrow, suggests that the Nation has yet before it an important mission in connection with the destinies of Western Asia. The present great World Conflict has brought the Armenians through the persecutions and martyrdoms which they have endured from the cruel and heartless Turkish Government, very close to the hearts of Americans. They appeal to our people on the basis of race, for they are substantially Indo-Europeans; on the basis of faith, for they were the first of Christian Nations; and on the basis of Humanity, for their indescribable sufferings have evoked the sympathies of the world. Armenia has been attracting the attention of the civilized and Christian world. Those parts of Armenia, which were in the Turkish and Persian empires, have been turned by the devotees of the Mohammedan faith into altars upon which human sacrifices have been offered. Yea, not only the Turkish and Persian Armenia but also the whole of Asia Minor, and in fact every city, town, and village in the Turkish Empire where Armenians were found, the high priests and low priests of Islam were intensely engaged in the slaughter of the Christians as sacrifices acceptable to Allah. It is a lamentable fact that according to the teaching of Mohammed the severer the Mohammedan is to his unbelieving or non-Mohammedan neighbor the greater will be his reward, and the better his position in paradise. It may not, therefore, be amiss if we say a few words about the original and ancestral home of the Armenians, whence they have been at times driven and scattered throughout the Mohammedan dominions and have become the victims of cruelty and massacre for ages. Armenia lies directly north of Mesopotamia. It is bounded on the north by the Caucasian Mountains, on the south by the Mesopotamian plains, on the east it extends to the Caspian Sea and Media and on the west to the Black Sea and Asia Minor. The country of Armenia was divided into two main divisions, namely, Armenia Major and Armenia Minor, or the Greater and Less Armenia. Greater Armenia which comprised the larger part of the country extended from the eastern boundary to the Euphrates river, and Armenia Minor extended from the Euphrates to Asia Minor. This ancient river thus made a dividing line between the two main divisions of the country. Armenia Major was again divided into fifteen provinces. Armenia is a highland from 4000 to 7000 feet above the level of the sea. Its surface is undulated with beautiful dells and hills, with fertile valleys and forest covered mountains, with richly productive and extensive plains and pasture lands, and lofty snow capped mountains with glittering snowy peaks, piercing the clear blue sky. The highest mountain of western Asia is situated at the center of Armenia. It is the Mount Masis of the natives, and Mount Ararat of the Europeans, and is of unsurpassed beauty, magnificence and grandeur. No traveler has ever yet seen it and not spoken of it with admiration. “The impression made by Ararat upon the mind of every one who has any sensibility of the stupendous works of the Creator, is wonderful and overpowering, and many a traveler of genius and taste has employed both the power of the pen and of the pencil in attempting to portray this impression, but the consciousness that no description, no representation can reach the sublimity of the object thus attempted to be depicted, must prove to the candid mind that whether we address the ear or eye, it is difficult to avoid the poetic in expression and exaggeration in form, and confine ourselves strictly within the bound of consistency and truth. “Nothing can be more beautiful than its shape, more awful than its height. All the surrounding mountains sink into insignificance when compared to it. It is perfect in all its parts; no hard rugged features, no unnatural prominence; everything is in harmony, and all combined to render it one of the sublimest objects in nature. “The fabric of Ararat composes an elliptic figure with an axis from northwest to southeast. The base plan measures about twenty-eight miles in length, and about twenty-three miles in width. The fabric is built up by two mountains. Greater Ararat (16,916 feet above the sea) and Little Ararat (12,840 feet above the sea). Their bases are contiguous at a level of 8800 feet, and their summits are seven miles apart. Both are due to eruptive volcanic action; but no eruption of Ararat is known to have occurred during the historical period, and the summit of the greater mountain presents all the appearance of a very ancient and much worndown volcano with a central chimney or vent, long since filled in.” From this central plateau, the highest mountain in Armenia, the land slopes down in all directions. On the south it inclines toward the Lake of Van and the plains of Mush; on the east toward the lower valley of Araxes, on the north to the middle valley of Araxes, and on the northeast and east toward the plains of Kars and Erzerum. “Along the line of the fortieth degree of latitude a succession of plains extend across the tableland, varying in their depression below the higher levels, watered by the Araxes and by the upper course of the western Euphrates, and each giving access to the other by natural passages. The first is the valley of the Araxes, with its narrower continuation westwards through the district between Kagyzman and Khorasan; the second is the plain of Pasin; the third the plain of Erzerum. Yet while the plains of Pasin and Erzerum are situated respectively at an altitude of fifty-five hundred feet and fifty-seven hundred and fifty feet, the valley of the Araxes in the neighborhood of Erivan is only twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea. Both on the north and south of this considerable depression, even the plainer levels of the tableland attain the imposing altitude of seven thousand feet, while its surface has been uplifted by volcanic action into long and irregular convexities of mountain and hill and hummock.”