V. The State of Our Husbandry Today

Do you see, my sharp-eyed Tornik, that the husbandry of our village people lies still in the same swaddling-bands of antiquity? We are wandering yet in the old, old centuries; all the labors of our husbandry are a torment of bitter sweat; the tools we ply are unhewn, artless, rude-built things, which torture not us alone, but far more our poor dumb beasts.

Look — there comes the village laborer from the field, his cart laden with the sheaved wheat. He has yoked a pair of strong buffaloes and a pair of oxen, which, hauling the cart with much ado, scarce bring in an hour, to the threshing-floor, what is half an hour's road. The conscienceless carter plies the poor buffaloes with the drover's whip, crack on crack; tongues lolling out, breathless and snorting, they haul. Let us go near, Tornik — look at that rude, monstrous cart; measure the cart's length and breadth. The cart turns all of a piece with its axles; and the wheel-block seated on the axle, if we weigh it together with its wheels, comes to more than a hundred litras,¹ for it is built all of stout elm-wood, which is very heavy among the kinds of wood; so the cart is of itself one huge burden, and upon this burden they load as many as a hundred and fifty sheaves of wheat, and more.

I take much comfort, Tornik, that you now see the village people of Van beginning to use the light carts of Karin,² which give the husbandman great ease.

Let us go — there, close by, they are plowing a field; let me show you Adam's own gutan.³ See — it is one thick, crook-backed beam of ash-wood, more than three cubits long; and the villagers of Van call it the esh — the donkey; and truly it is a slow donkey to drag. To the hinder end of this donkey-beam is joined the share-head, and over its head they have fitted the iron share. The gutan of Van breaks the ground with one pair of yoke-drawing buffaloes and three pairs of oxen; and the furrows it opens have scarce a large span's depth. But let me tell you, Tornik: if you saw the gutans of the plain of Mush, of Alashkert, and of the Ararat country, you would shudder — with nine pairs of fighting buffaloes and oxen they scarce work that rude gutan, and the furrow it opens differs not greatly from our gutan's furrow; several houses of a village must join together barely to yoke one gutan. Our gutans of the Van villages, if we compare them with those, are much the more perfected; for our gutan-joiners are very skillful masters, and with the plumb-line they give the gutan such a trim that at times it walks the line without swerving, and opens its furrow true. But if we compare it with the plow of Europe, our gutan falls behind. For yoke one pair of buffaloes, or two pairs of oxen, to the European plow, and it breaks the ground with all ease, though the ground be unbroken fallow; whereas our gutan you must work with four yoke. And do you know, Tornik, what an economy it is for the labor of tillage, when we can plow with two yoke in the stead of four? Above all, how handy and profitable it is for those village houses that have not many draft cattle.

I am very glad, Tornik: I heard, and went and saw — there is in Van a skillful, inventive joiner, Usta David⁴ they call him, who builds plows in all exactness after the European pattern; likewise there is another craftsman, a blacksmith, Aleksan by name, and he makes the iron parts of the plow — it is enough that you show him a model. Now the villagers round about Van have begun to use that plow; the price is very cheap: for three gold pieces a plow can be built. And do you know, Tornik, what an ease it is for villagers to buy a plow ready-made? I know how the poor villager — for gutan, for cart, and for the buying of the divers other timbers that tillage needs — leaving the labor of his field, goes for days together and haunts the tree-gardens of Van, that he may find fitting timbers; and how dear he is then driven to buy them!

Would God a workshop were opened in Van — that the skillful joiners and ironworkers, forming a modest company, made ready in that workshop all the tools that tillage needs: not the gutan only, but small plows too, and light carts whose axles should turn within the wheels; all the gear that belongs to the threshing — the threshing-sledge, the jarjar⁵ and the rest; the manker,⁶ the leveling-drag, yokes, and so on. Then should you see, Tornik, what ease there would be for the plowing folk! And how much would that little company gain — able to furnish not the villagers of Van only, but the neighboring provinces besides; for the lake of Van gives great ease for the carriage of the tools of tillage. If this undertaking prosper, and the old tools be changed for new, the land's yield will go greatly forward — which will be a double increase, not for the subject people only, but for the revenue of the state; for the flourishing of the land's tillage is the wellspring of the state treasury's wealth.

Thus, Tornik, laying aside the old tools, and with them the old ingrained prejudices, we must receive the ever-new tools that craft invents. For the unknowing people this is hard enough; but when the people sees with its own eye a working example — the ease of the labor, and therewith the profit and the earnings — it takes courage straightway, and sets itself to try and to learn. Or do you hold our village folk so dull and stupid, that it should see its own profit before its eyes, and not strive to obtain it?

Listen, Tornik; let me tell you a little story, that you may be persuaded how men strive to snatch out of one another's hand whatever thing bears profit.

They relate that a Frenchman carried a good quantity of potatoes, for seed, from America into France, and planting one field of potatoes, prospered and took a great yield. And since his aim was to spread the culture of that useful plant through France, he would give out the potatoes of his tillage free to the people; the people sets no store by it — nay, mocks him besides. Now see what the ingenious farm-master does: he asks constables of the government and sets a guard upon the potato field; but secretly he instructs the constables that if men steal into the potato field and thieve, the guards should feign not to see, and give them leave. Men see that there are guards over the field; then, say they, there are good things to eat within it. They begin cunningly to steal the potatoes; at the first they eat them raw, and afterward they boil them — and find it an excellent thing: it has a savor like the egg, and gives a man good nourishment. And in this way the culture of the potato spread, not through France alone, but through all Europe; in time of famine it is a saving food for the people.

Did you see, Tornik, what a master's device the ingenious Frenchman played? By the hands of thieves he spread his discovery through the whole land of France. France indeed! — today all Europe busies itself with the culture of the potato; after wheat, it is counted the most needful thing for man's food.

How much to be desired it were, that our laboring people too, following this example, should learn to till that gainful plant, which yields even thirty and forty for one; and when it fell out that the tillage of wheat did not prosper, the culture of the potato would fill its place, and men besides would stay free of famine's bitter scourge.

Having spoken upon the tools of tillage — do you know, Tornik, there are living tools besides, more needful still: our yoke-bearing laboring beasts, which weary more than we in the heaviest labors of tillage. But one must know which is the fitter for tillage — the ox, the buffalo, or the horse. We commonly use ox and buffalo; and experience shows us that the gentle-natured ox is fitter than the buffalo, and gives great ease in the using.

For the buffalo adds great occupation and difficulty for the laborer — above all at the beginning of spring, when they are led out of the winter stable grown fat and lusty: some weeks are needed before you can tame those fierce and furious beasts, and then bring their proud necks under the yoke. Have you seen what means the laborers put to work to reconcile those fighting buffaloes one with another? So foolish and brutish a device have they thought out and found, that before the spectacle of their battle no man can endure to stand, if he has a tender heart. They lead two fighting buffaloes out to the open field and let them go — and see then with what violence head is dashed against head, with a terrific crash. The battle's end is sometimes this, that the one, taking the first blow, sees his own weakness and takes flight; and sometimes, their strength being equal, both sides in their stubbornness will not part until the leg of the one or the other is broken, or the horn flies from its root. There is one wonderful law among these fighters: when the one stands forth victor and the other flees, thenceforth they are at peace with one another, and meekly they go side by side under the yoke.

Let us not marvel, Tornik, that the unknowing villager seals the terms of his buffaloes' peace in this fashion: is not the world's law of peace even such?

Leave that; the use of the buffalo has labor and hardship besides of another kind. For buffaloes, sturdy and thick-necked as they are, are yet very delicate, and ask great tending; they endure neither cold nor heat; in summer you must wash them several times a day, and in winter too you must at the least wash them now and again, and anoint them with oil. And do you know how hard it is to master such buffaloes as never grow tame, but love battle always and trouble the peace of the others? One laborer must busy himself with such a beast apart, and keep watch over him; the villager has but one device for working those unruly fighters — and straightway they obey. And at times the villagers even count it a great boast for themselves to keep fighting buffaloes; for the peasant folk, too, has its vainglory in its measure. How proud our brother Toros stands, when his buffalo beats the buffalo of Kirakos! And see then the battle of Toros and Kirakos themselves — above all when some hurt has befallen the beaten buffalo, a leg broken or a horn flown off; and the issue of it is grudge-bearing, and revenge one against the other.

It seems to me, Tornik, that it is the heavy and insufferable tools of tillage that have given the villagers cause to use the buffalo. But when the tools grow light and easy, no need will remain of the buffalo's use. Yes — in the order of stock-raising the buffalo too has his usefulness, for his hide and for his flesh; and then the horn, out of which the European by his craft makes things of many kinds — hafts for knife and clasp-knife, and buttons — while our oil-seller measures out his oil with a horn: and that is the whole of its usefulness.

Therefore it is best, Tornik, that the villagers be persuaded, and learn to use rather the ox in the constant labor; whose tending, in summer and in winter alike, is very easy — he asks neither washing nor anointing; it is enough only to scrape his back with the currycomb and keep him clean. But the breed of the oxen must be ennobled, after the manner of the oxen of the province of Alashkert, which are very fine and huge; the oxen of our province of Van are stunted and strengthless — the causes whereof I shall expound to you in their place.

But let me tell you, Tornik: over buffalo and ox alike the horse has a very great advantage, if we but knew how, and were able, to use him in our labor of husbandry. The villager will laugh, perhaps: he has not seen it, and cannot believe that the whole world of Europe uses only the horse for its agriculture, though it keeps oxen without number — and those only for the flesh and the hide. Let me tell you the horse's properties: first, the horse's breast has twice the strength of the ox's neck; second, the horse has great swiftness in labor. Reckon it so: if a plow yoked with ox and buffalo opens fifty furrows in a day, the horse-plow will surely open as many as seventy furrows, and more. Above all for drawing the cart, and for treading out the sheaves, the horse's use is beyond compare.

But will the villager be persuaded, then, to leave his old inherited order and custom? Yes, Tornik — yet the villager too has his right, so long as schooling and the times lend him no hand; and more than all there is his deep-rooted prejudice: to pluck that time-hallowed notion out of his mind, schooling is needed, and ample time.

But shall we wait, then, till he be schooled, and his mind consent to the new progress? No: as I said before, we must show the village people by working example — let it see with its own eye; for he who cannot read or write is hard put to grasp with the mind, but by the sight of the eye and the plain example he grasps quickly, and the work's gainful fruit moves him to follow the example. In the ages of the old world, when there was no writing, no school and no learning, men learned every thing and every craft one from another by the practice of the eye; and even now our Eastern world learns the plain crafts by that same practice — smithing, for example, tailoring, shoemaking, joinery, and the rest — whereas the forward-gone Western world first gives those crafts as lessons in the school, in the way of theory; and when the pupil comes out of the school, he learns the practical exercise in the workshop with great ease.