ports by $38,000,000; in 1894 the excess was in the opposite direction, the value of domestic exports being $215,000,000 greater than that of all the imports. From 1850 till 1874 the imports exceeded the exports; but since 1874 such has been the case only four times, namely in 1875, 1888, 1889, and 1893. This fact, while well worthy of notice, is of less practical interest to the man engaged in commerce than to the political economist who seeks to understand the principles upon which the wealth of nations depends. In 1894 nearly half the domestic exports from the United States were sent to Great Britain; but the bulk of the imports came from France, Germany, England, Cuba, and Brazil. The principal articles of export were unmanufactured cotton, hog products, and wheat flour, the total value of the first being $210,869,289; of the second $93,433,582, and of the third $69,271,770. Following these in the order of their importance were wheat, refined petroleum, animals, corn, manufactures of iron and steel, beef products, wood and wooden manufactures, tobacco, etc. The chief articles of import were sugar, coffee, and manufactures of cotton. The total value of the sugar brought in from foreign countries was $126,871,889, of the coffee $90,314,676, and of the cotton manufactures $35,443,834. The shipping engaged in the trade of the United States in 1894 included 23,586 vessels, with an aggregate tonnage of 4,684,029. The estimated value of the whole amount of floating property under the flag of the United States was $215,069,296. In the same year there were in this country 175,441 miles of railroad, upon which, within a period of twelve months, over 757,000,000 tons of merchandise had been carried to a greater or less distance. Compare now this condition of commercial activity with the small begin nings of international traffic which we noticed in our earlier talks, with the slow and uncertain caravan trade across the desert, or with the hazardous voyages of ancient ship-merchants feeling their way from point to point along some half-explored coast. Compare it even with what was in existence at the beginning of the present century. Sixty years ago all the ocean steamers in the world could be counted on one's fingers. Now, in the merchant service of the United States alone, there are 6,526 steamers. Then people had just begun to find out the possibilities of steam as a carrying power, and the first railroads were just being built. Now there is no densely peopled quarter of the globe in which the railroad is unknown. Within the brief period of sixty years also the telegraph has been perfected; and, although it carries no merchandise, it has proven to be of as great value to the commercial world as either the steamship or the railroad. "These wondrous and wondrously combined powers of science and mechanism have realized in the highest form conceivable to the practical mind the facility of transport and the means of rapid communication and intelligence which commerce had been seeking for from the beginning of time, but seeking in vain."* Their influence on the interior economy of commonwealths has been no less marked than on the exterior distribution of their products. They are the work of less than half a century, and yet to perfect them fabulous sums of money have been expended. On whatever side the question is considered, nothing less than marvels are presented to our reason; and, supposing these achievements to have been possible at an earlier age of the world, where was the wealth to be found to accomplish them? It may be said. that they have been called into existence by the rising energy and resources of commerce, and it may also be said that at every stage they have created the traffic by which alone they could be sustained and extended. What, then, has not commerce done for mankind? It has been the active promoter of civilization; it has been the instigator and vanguard of geographical discovery; it has been the instrument by which the nations of the globe have been brought into peaceful relationships one with another; it has encouraged invention, quickened the world's industries, placed comforts, even luxuries, within the reach of the humblest individuals, made it possible for dense populations to exist in countries deficient in natural resources, transformed the very face of the earth. Imagine the cessation of all traffic for only a single day, and how disastrous would be the result! J. B. * See E. B., Vol. VI. 206. QUESTION DEPARTMENT OF THE HOME UNIVERSITY LEAGUE For the benefit of those whose acquaintance with the Question Department begins with this issue, it may be well to say that SELF CULTURE readers are expected to look up in the Encyclopædia Britannica each day the answer to the question given for that day. This will seldom require more than one hour, but in the event that one evening's leisure does not suffice, it will be easy to continue the investigation the following evening while the subject is still fresh in the reader's mind. The conscientious pursuit of the home study involved in this department will lead to the possession of a large and varied stock of general information. T HE answers to SELF CULTURE questions for February will be found in Vol. XXIV. of the new Encyclopædia Britannica. The number which follows the question will enable the student to turn at once to the proper page. February 1. What is the extent of Venezuela's commerce and resources? 139, and 1594 Supplement February 2. What is Voltaire's place in literature? 285 February 3. What are the various methods of securing an adequate water supply for large centres of population? 402 February 4. What famous speeches lifted Daniel Webster above every other orator of his day? 471 February 5. What is the method of preparing the well-known vanilla extract for flavoring? 66 February 6. What inferences can be drawn from the statistics of vaccination? 23, and 1591 Supplement February 7. What were the fruits of Wagner's long activity in the musical world? 313, and 1608 Supplement February 8. What were the terrible consequences of the two greatest eruptions of Vesuvius, separated by an interval of nearly fifteen centuries? 195 February 13. What is known of the Vandals, who disappeared utterly from history, after fastening their name on a Spanish province, and furnishing a new word for revolting barbarism? 10 Self Culture A Magazine of Knowledge with Departments Devoted to the Interests of THE HOME UNIVERSITY LEAGUE. ENTERED AT THE POSTOFFICE AT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER. VOL. II. MARCH, 1896. No. 6. SELF CULTURE will be published on the first of each month. It will be sent postpaid for one year on receipt of $2.00.. ARMENIA IN HISTORY RMENIA and Mount Ararat, in Armenia, are names of peculiar interest. A widely accepted tradition has made the summit of Mount Ararat the resting-place of Noah's Ark. Christians and Mohammedans have alike accepted the tradition, not upon any grounds of certainty, and not without a parallel tradition among both Christians and Mo-, hammedans, which for a long time assigned to Mount Judi, in the south of Armenia, the honor of possessing actual relics of the Noachian Ark. The Ararat tradition has held out longer than any other against the disturbing effects of modern inquiry. Mount Ararat is situated about equally distant from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, as also from the Black Sea and the Caspian. It is the central, the culminating, the typical point of the Armenian Plateau, an elevated table-land, about 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, which slopes off toward the plains of Persia on the east and those of Asia Minor on the west. It was long believed by the Armenian monks that the top of Ararat, with the sacred remains of Noah's Ark, was divinely guarded against intrusion from below. The belief was that no climber from the region of common humanity would be permitted to reach the sacred summit. The ascent, however, was accomplished in 1829, when a German, in the employment of Russia, set Copyright, 1896, by THE WERNER foot on the "dome of eternal ice," Sep- The climate of Armenia is one of intense cold in the highlands in winter and very extreme heat in the valleys in summer. There is in May not less than nine thousand feet of snow on the slopes of Ararat, and huge glaciers of ice are part of the vast elevation. The greater part of the upward reaches of the mountain is entirely destitute of vegetation, but the lower reach and the base are clothed with birches. The mountain overlooks the confines of Russian, Turkish and Persian dominions in different directions. All of Armenia east of Ararat belongs to Persia toward the south or to Russia on the north. Armenia was anciently an extensive country of western Asia, the historical greatness of which has been destroyed, as that of Poland has been destroyed. Persia has taken a large part of Armenia, Russia has taken a part, and Turkey has a large part. In its widest extent Armenia would reach from the Caspian Sea COMPANY. All rights reserved. 849 on the east well into Asia Minor on the west, and from the Caucasus in the north to the mountains of Kurdistan in the south. The limits of latitude were from 37° to 42° N., and those of longitude from 36° to 49° E. A division was formerly made into Greater and Lesser Armenia, of which Greater extended from the Caspian Sea to the Euphrates and Lesser lay farther west. The Euphrates and the Tigris, anciently famous in connection with Assyria and Babylonia, on their middle and southern course, and between which lies Mesopotamia next south of Armenia, are Armenian streams in their upper waters and in their sources. The river Aras, or Araxes, traverses the northern part of Armenia, emptying into the Caspian Sea. The vast table-land, rising, as already said, seven thousand feet above the level of the sea and culminating in the peaks of Ararat, is broken by mountains amid which are formed a great number of lakes. The most notable of the large lakes are Van and Sevan, of which the former is a salt lake. Among the mineral resources of Armenia are copper, iron, lead, salt, and alum. The country is one of romantic scenery, of luxuriant pasture, of much natural fertility in the sheltered valleys, abundantly producing grain, cotton, rice, tobacco, and grapes, but extremely backward in development from the centuries of neglect entailed by misfortune and misgovernment. Agriculture is much less followed than grazing and cattle-breeding. The Armenians trace their origin to Haik, or Haig, said to have been the earliest king of Armenia and a descendant of Japhet. The race is thoroughly Aryan or Indo-Germanic, and physically a fine variety of that race. Among its ancient kings Tigranes, or Dikram, about 550 B. C., was a friend and ally of Cyrus the Great. The Armenian people have remained through the entire period free from Semitic admixture, such as affected Babylonia nearly 4,000 years before Christ, and made Assyria almost wholly Semitic. The Semitic religion of Mohammed, represented by the sultan, has for many ages bitterly antagonized the Armenians. As early as 328 B. C. conquest by Alexander the Great put an end to an ancient Armenian kingdom, and from that period Macedonians, Romans, Parthians, and Persians possessed or contended for possession of different parts of the country. In the second and third centuries A. D. Christianity became to a large extent the religion of the Armenians. The Armenian Church claims to have been founded by the Apostles, not to say by Christ himself before the Apostles, through letters sent to Prince Akbar. There is no doubt in regard to a later historical foundation by Gregory, called "The Illuminator," who brought about the adoption of Christianity by the state and the baptism of King Tiridates in 289 A. D., and who was made Hierarch or Bishop of Armenia in 302 A. D. Gregory's successors assumed the title of Patriarch, which was subsequently made that of Catholicos. The Bible was translated into Armenian as early as 410 A. D. The liturgy, already in use and said to be very old, was improved. Armenian bishops took part in several of the synods or councils of the early church until that of Chalcedon, 451 A. D. They were prevented, by persecutions which they were suffering at the time, from taking part at Chalcedon; and in consequence of misunderstandings, occasioned by an erroneous report of what had been decreed at Chalcedon, steps were taken which separated the Armenian from the existing Catholic Church. The things which had been rejected at Chalcedon were reported to the Armenians as having been accepted and decreed. cepted and decreed. The result of this was that the bishop, with the authority of a full synod of the Armenian churches, solemnly repudiated what was understood to be the action of the Catholic Church at Chalcedon, and thereby created the separation, which left the Armenian Church the earliest to separate from the general communion of Christians. Armenian Christianity is thus a separate Catholic Church such as the Greek Church became later. It is not materially different from either the Greek or the Roman Catholic, except as it has held to its own development of customs, for the most part marked by greater simplicity than those of either the Greek or the Roman communion. It has a clergy consisting of bishops, priests, and deacons. There is a threefold distinction of bishops: first the archbishops, chief among whom is the Patriarch or Catholicos; second, the bishops, and third, the doctors of theology, who may have the same functions and charge as a bishop. The clergy are divided into the black, who are monks and who are alone eligible for the higher clerical offices, and the white, including the parish priests and lower clergy. The clergy may marry before ordination, but not after. The widow of a priest is not permitted to remarry. Priesthood is hereditary, but the heir may follow a secular calling until the death of the priest, his father or grandfather, from whom he inherits. There are four patriarchs, who reside at Constantinople, Jerusalem, Sis, and Etchmiadzin. Armenia has had no proper history during the whole period which has seen the making of North America. About the middle of the fourteenth century, 150 years before Columbus, the south of Armenia was in the hands of semi-barbarous Kurds; the north in those of the Persians, while the Ottoman Turks already held the west. Timour subjugated the whole with cruelties characteristic of his progress everywhere. Persian governors were for the most part in control during the next hundred years, and in 1604 the whole country was laid waste by Persia and 40,000 of the population transplanted into Persia. From that date, for nearly 300 years, there has been no Armenian nation. The country has been divided between Russia, Turkey and Persia; and Armenians, like Jews, have gone in considerable numbers wherever commerce and trade invited them. There are said to be more than 200,000 in Constantinople itself, 25,000 in India and the isles of India, 25,000 in Austria, 150,000 in Persia, 1,200,000 under Russian rule, and 2,500,000 under the rule of the Ottoman Turk. A brave and warlike people in their earlier history, they have everywhere shown a disposition to peace, to order, and to progress, and have formed a leading element in whatever community has given them a home. The simplicity, breadth, and sincerity of their Christian faith within the limits of their ecclesiastical order and custom, as these have been developed among them, have ever made them conspicuously Christian in life and character. Their pre-Christian literature has totally perished. Christian literary development among them was very marked until in the sixth century A. D., when the Persians cut off the connection between Armenia and the centers of Greek culture, with the result that Armenian Christian literature became almost extinct. For 600 years there was a second great period of Armenian literature during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but followed by decline from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. For more than a century past remarkable development has taken place in spite of the absence of national unity. But for the fact that the Armenian Christian, worthy alike of the respect of the Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic and Protestant, has appealed in vain, upon an almost unparalleled spectacle of need and wretchedness, to Christian compassion, Armenia would have presented to-day a marvelously interesting and impressive spectacle of prosperity and progress on the great table-land from which she looks off toward Syria and Babylonia and Persia, where great memories have lain buried for centuries. TWELVE CONTEMPORARY ESTIMATES OF WASHINGTON MONG recent books of specially American interest and importance, a small one on "Washington a Model in his Library and Life," by President E. N. Potter, of Hobart College, Geneva, N.Y., ought to be very widely studied. It is a book of suggestions of great value in the direction of broadly intelligent appreciation of the intellectual as well as moral greatness of the Father of his Country. President Potter suggests the propriety of a centennial commemoration of the death of Washington on or about December 14th, 1899, on the ground that "efforts are due to stamp heart-deep on the coming times, the character of this ideal American." Without attempting to touch here upon the points of President Potter's exceedingly valuable sketch, we offer to our readers a series of testimonies by persons who saw Washington closely during the time within which he completely won the love of America and the reverence of mankind. These testimonies are given in the order of their dates. They are, without exception, from intelligent observers, who spoke of what |