CHAPTER IX.

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES AND THE ARMENIAN
PROTESTANTS.

I BEGAN with a strong prejudice against the
American mission-work. I had heard from several
sides reports that the missionaries " lend the cloak
of religion to these Armenians, who use it partly to
conceal their swindling, lying, cheating, and other
mean vices, partly in the hope of getting a little
protection from the missionaries, and through them
sometimes obtaining a measure of justice". Other
reports had been different; but the latter I had re-
garded as due to pious prejudice in favour of converts
brought into the true fold, while the former seemed
to me to be the cool judgment of men of affairs.
Gradually, and by slow steps, I came to reverse
my opinion in the light of what I saw.

It seems to me quite true that several of the Pro-
testants whom I saw had not been converts accord-
ing to the sense in which many pious people consider
that true conversion must take place—the sense,
e.g., in which the convert is convinced of sin by a

preacher of die Salvation Army. They had adopted
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