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MONASTEEY OF ST NISHAN 155
left to Sivas after Marsovan has waylaid any sympathetic
visitor possessed of well-filled purse, is said
to be no chance at all. Such visitors do not even
reach Sivas. In the matter of missionaries, too,
Sivas alleges that new-comers are allured to Marsovan
and cannot be allured away—that Marsovan
is, in fact, the Sun of the Mission Universe in
these parts, and attracts all things to it. So Sivas
is pleased to speak of Marsovan as the "gilt-edged
mission," and of itself as a useful workaday community
struggling against many difficulties. Yet one
may notice that Sivas is endeavouring to become giltedged
itself, and even has prospect of doing so,—at
least to the extent of forming a large compound, and
thereby increasing its capacity for mission work of all
kinds.
The head of this mission took me one day to call on
the Armenian Bishop of Sivas, whose residence was in
the old Monastery of St Nishan, a couple of miles
outside the city. The monastery stands by itself in
open country upon a low hill, hardly greater than a
rise. From a distance you see little except a high
grey enclosing wall, with the pyramidal roof of the
ancient church rising above it. A plain, undefended
outer wall of no great strength must be, one would
think, small protection against massacre, yet this
monastery, though it had given shelter to hundreds
of Armenians in troublous times, had never been
forced by the mob. Even the short distance that
separated it from the city acted as a protection. A
mob bent on massacre, it is said, always contains a
certain number of people to whom the trouble of
going two miles out, and two back, ensures that
they do not go at all. There are others, also, of
small imagination, who prefer to stay by the business
they can actually see.
A porter admitted us through the great gate of the
monastery. We were shown at last into a small dimly
lighted room by a long-haired, black-gowned cleric. A
sort of medieval flavour pervaded the room, which had