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ZEITUN GUNSMITHS 401
its torrent tumbling below. There are said to be
women still living who took part in this deed of
wild revenge. With a little more time in Zeitim,
I should have looked out one of these Armenian Jaels
and got the story from her own lips ; it was, however,
only one of many such stories I had hoped to collect,
but could not owing to my shortened stay.
Every one in Zeitun is armed, and upon the road a
man with slung shot-gun—the rifles are kept out of
sight—seemed to be the correct figure. Cartridges
can be smuggled in, but rifles present difliculties ; so
Zeitun gunsmiths make them— not openly, but in
caves on Beirut Dagh, so the story goes for what it
is worth, and I doubted much what sort of weapon
could be produced until I saw one said to be of local
make. Except for the curious flat stock, and that all
the parts were bright, it was a Peabody-Martini. The
gunsmiths, it was told, could take a rifle and faithfully
copy it, working chiefly by hand, and produce
a weapon that would shoot, if not as well as the
original, yet well enough. That they so make shotguns
I know, for I watched them at the work in a
little shop in Zeitun bazaar,
Zeitunlis call themselves the British of Asia Minor.
A better comparison w^ould be with the Montenegrins,
for on a smaller scale the story of Zeitun has
a strong' resemblance to that of the little Balkan
State. For six hundred years the town and district
have been known as the home of Armenians
who united and held their own against all comers.
Their struggle against the Ottoman State during the
past half century alone is a wonderful performance,
considering how small a people they are. They have
defeated Turkish forces repeatedly. Once at least,
as we have seen, they captured the Turkish fort built
for their control. At another time 30,000 Turkish
regulars, besides a great cloud of Circassians from
Albistan, were sent ag-ainst the district. In this
struggle the Zeitunlis came very near to extermmation,
and were saved only by the determined inter-
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