LIFE IN ASIA MINOR.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 443, 5 February 1890, Page 3

LIFE IN ASIA MINOR.

Work of American Missionaries. (From the Regular Correspondent of the ‘ Tribune.’) Marsovan, Turkey-in-Asia, August 30tb, 1889.—We toiled back up the hill, out of the Gorge of Amasia, and struck off in a north-westerly direction across the plain toward the town of Marsovan. The harvest was still in progress, and the reapers gathering their handfuls with the old-fashioned sickles included the whole family of the farmer. Even the babies were there in their cradles in the shade of the rare trees; visited by the sturdy mothers occasionally, under the influence of that curious dread common to mothers that their offspring may take a sudden notion to cease breathing. Houses there were none, save as we could see at rare intervals the clumps of trees and mud huts of the villages where these farmers huddle for safety, far away from their fields. Twenty miles of riding brought us to Marsovan. In keeping with the usages of Asia Minor, the people have their vineyards and orchards in the outskirts of the town, and pack their houses, of sun-dried brick, on the sides of the narrow winding lanes, which answer the purpose of streets. The houses are still built on the theory of the castles of more ancient and troublous times, with windows looking on the street only in the upper storey. The contrast between the {verdure of the outskirts of the town and the gloom of its streets hemmed in by endless dead walls of brown mud is striking and depressing. Marsovan has 25,000 inhabitants, and the difference between the effect on the mind of entering it and that experienced on entering an American town of the same population is about like the difference of impressions produced by going into a penitentiary and those evoked by the interior of a $50,000 house in a civilised country. These feelings disappeared, however, when we found a hospitable welcome at the home of the American missionaries, which forms a delightful annex to the northern end of Marsovan. The next day being Sunday we went with the missionaries to the church built up under their auspices. Puritan simplicity is boo luxurious a term to describe the style of this church and its appointments. Its walls were of the usual material of the earth, earthy, but were neatly whitewashed. The roof was supported by columns formed of pine logs merely stripped of their bark and sand-papered till smooth. The pews were strips of haircloth spread on the- floor. Upon these rough carpets the audience sat cross-legged—an economical arrangement, by which a congregation of a thousand were compressed within the limits of a hall which would not seat 600 on the American plan. In this church, where American ideas have tempered Eastern exclusiveness, a light fence ran along each side of the building to mark off the narrow strips of floor spaces given up to the use of the fair sex. With prudent forethought worthy of the men of the early New England times, the deacons had arranged the small boys of the assembly, to the number of a hundred or more, in front and directly under the aweinspiring eye of the minister. When the whole congregation, led by an American organ, burst forth in a hearty rendering of a Turkish hymn, set to a familiar Moody and Sankey tune, there was no mistaking the adoption of some at least of the ideas introduced by the missionaries. It was impossible to sib in that place and to observe the close attention given to the sermon of the missionary without feeling that the moral and intellectual influences of the Americans will certainly affect the whole future of these curiously backward races.