Introduction
is not so hard upon him as she is upon the Khurd, whom she almost overwhelms in the struggle for existence. The soil of the Van and Mush plains can even produce sufficient to enable the people to support a leisured class and develop a culture of their own. There is no exuberance of luxury, such as in the Persian oases tends to produce all kinds of hot-house culture. But the numerous monasteries of the Van basin and the Mush plain testify to the cult of art and letters among the Armenians at a very early date. The Armenian's ideas of life have settled down into a simple creed—a practical form of Christianity. He has brought reason and logic to bear upon the problems of life, and in this respect he is not unlike the Bulgarian, whose mode of existence is very similar. Both these peoples differ markedly from the Greeks and Georgians with their acute intellect and passion for controversy. The separate development of the Armenian Church, and its steady refusal to unite with the Greek and Georgian Churches, is undoubtedly connected with the difference in temperament of the two peoples.
In the region to the east of Armenia and Khurdistan the land sinks into the lower levels of Persia. The mountain ranges that run across Anatolia from west to east, and are covered in part by the volcanic eruptions of Armenia, reappear with a slight south-easterly bend in Western Persia. The Iranian plateau is less sharply divided than Armenia by great ranges of mountains. True, the Elburz range on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, and the Bakhtiari mountains along the northern shores of the Persian Gulf, form barriers against movements from north and south. But apart
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