CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIII.THE REIGN OF TERROR—VAN AND MOUSH.Much earnest and faithful missionary work had been done in the cities and towns of the various Armenian provinces, before the storm of desolation swept over them. Evangelistic, educational and medical lines had been followed and now the missionaries, who had been laboring in a land where crops had failed and where the inhabitants were leaving their homes to escape starvation, were to face massacre, pillage and horrors, such as the world had not beheld for centuries. No words of praise are adequate to tell the story of the devotion which kept them at their posts, or of the succor they extended to the victims of the Sultan’s hate.A vivid picture of the desolation that everywhere prevailed, was given by one who was engaged in the work of distributing relief money in July, 1895.Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.“Semal and Shenig are situated in a continuous, moderately wide valley, with a little reach of rolling land between the encircling mountains where about half the hill fields are growing green with a sort of millet that matures in a few weeks and which the sufferers were persuaded to come and sow, with oxen loaned by the poor, but generous villagers of the Moush plain. These few fields and few people at work upon them, were all there was to relieve the sad desolation which reigned over all. Buildings, once the homes of happy and prosperous countrymen, now presented only ruinedwalls with not a chip to show they had ever roofs to cover them, save a few, of which a little corner was rudely covered last fall, so that the wretched owners could find imperfect shelter during last winter. The torch of the incendiary soldiers had consumed every vestige of wood from all these scattered homes. The church at the central hamlet, where Der Hohannes (whose eyes were bored out and his throat pierced, while yet alive, by the cruel soldiers), used to officiate, being of stone, was not consumed, being the only roofed building in all the valley, after that flood of carnage had swept past. Near this church we pitched our tent, and began to study the situation.“Beneath our eye, in these two villages, had already gathered over one thousand people, whom it was our work to try and set upon their feet again, so that they could start once more on the uphill road towards prosperity. Could a community be conceived of more completely prostrated? The sheep and cattle, which composed their wealth, in the hands of Kurds, as also their few simple household belongings, cooking vessels, clothing, bedding, etc., and whatever money they may have managed to hoard. Those who fled with their lives found themselves nearly as destitute of all that makes life comfortable as the day they were born.English liberality has already spent five thousand dollars, and the authorities gave reluctant consent to our coming up to distribute it. We located here at Semal, while the Turkish committee has its headquarters at Shenig, half an hour distant. It was evident that the thing to be first accomplished was the erection of houses, and only a few weeks remained in which it would be accomplished, so we set about persuading thepeople to begin preparing their walls for the timbers the government had promised them.“Of the survivors of the massacre (of 1894), five thousand have already gathered to try and reëstablish their old homes, while possibly another eleven hundred may still be scattered over the world. It is impossible as yet to give the exact number of the slaughtered, but it will probably be not far from 4,000. We feel that unless a different status from the present can be secured to distribute anything to these people beyond daily food, is simply to run the risk of its falling into the hands of the Kurds. We have distributed a good many tools, with which the people are gathering hay, in hope of having some animal to eat it during the winter. We should be glad to furnish them with tools for laying up the walls of their houses, and even pay the wages of masons to come and help them. It is all we can do now to prevent the people from fleeing again to the plain, when all their crops would go for naught.”Near Harpoot eleven villages were compelled to accept Mohammedanism, and also near Van the entire population of two villages were forced to change their religion. Eight villages near Van were entirely depopulated. Most of the inhabitants were killed, and those who survived escaped to the snow-covered mountains, where they wandered with their children, naked and starving. The men who were forced to accept Mohammedanism were compelled to take their own sisters-in-law, whose husbands have been killed, to wife—a practice most horrible to the Christians, who hated polygamy. They were also compelled to plunder and kill their Armenian brethren to show that their conversion to Mohammedanism was genuine. The young maidensof these villages were carried into the Pasha’s harem. The Kurds attacked the same villages over and over to make their work of destruction complete, and yet the Sultan ordered his ambassador in Washington to deny that there were any forcible conversions to Islam.All accounts received of the hardships endured by the Armenians were distressing in the extreme. Many of the refugees, weakened by want and exposure, were dying. Fully one thousand Armenian families in the province of Van alone were in want of food. A majority of these families lived on roots and herbs, the few fortunate ones had bread made of clover seed, linseed or flax, mixed with grass and roots. In the district of Moks, three-fourths of the villagers left their homes and were in danger of starving. In Shadakh, two-thirds of the population were homeless wanderers. Beggars swarmed in the streets of Van, but so general was the poverty that little help could be afforded. So widespread was the want that many declared, in bitterness of heart, “there is no food in all the length and breadth of Armenia”—which was long ago the Garden of Eden. Many poor were fed daily at the American mission in Van.America and Armenia both owe more than words can ever express to the energy, devotion and abundant generosity that sent Mr. W. W. Howard, in 1895, to investigate the situation in Armenia. In a later chapter the story of the great relief work will be told, meanwhile Mr. Howard will tell his story. “I have just returned from the interior of the devastated region of Armenia and the English language is impotent to produce a true picture of the actual condition of that distressed country, and a just regard for the conventionalitiesof civilized speech will not permit that the whole truth be told. The refined Christian mind can understand wickedness and iniquity up to a certain point, but beyond that point, it either refuses to believe, or it is incapable of receiving additional impressions.“There are in Armenia at the present moment at least two hundred thousand persons fighting a death fight with famine! In the one province of Van, which is the center of Armenia, there are fully one hundred thousand persons, out of a total Armenian population of one hundred and forty-five thousand, in actual want of food.“Many have already died of starvation, and thousands of villagers are barely keeping soul and body together by eating roots and herbs and sort of bread made of clover seed, flax or linseed meal, mixed with edible grass. I have brought to peaceful, prosperous America specimen loaves of this hunger-bread. Starving villagers, reduced to the verge of despair, are crowding into the cities to beg for food and work. Three thousand unwilling beggars walk the streets of the city of Van, like spectres of famine, asking bread from door to door, who six months ago were comparatively prosperous. Others, too proud to beg, but in as desperate condition, crouch in their ruined homes, waiting for a merciful death to end their sufferings.“These are not hallucinations on my part, but are things which I myself have lately seen with my own eyes. Unless these wretched people receive immediate help, they will perish of starvation. They must have food and clothing or they cannot possibly survive the winter. They are now living on roots and herbs andedible grass, together with this terrible hunger-bread, the mere odor of which is enough to make a strong man shudder; but when winter begins, in October, the supply of edible grass and roots and herbs will be cut off. What will become of them then?“The Armenians have no wheat, and no money with which to buy food. The Kurds and the Turks have taken everything, and the Armenians have nothing.“The Armenians planted only half a crop this year, owing to the persecutions and exactions which beset them on all sides. In the early summer, when the young grain was green, the Kurds pastured their buffalos and their cattle in the growing wheat. Much of the crop was thus destroyed. Later, when that which remained of the wheat was ready for the harvest, the Kurds came down, cut off the heads of the ripened grain, and left the worthless stubble for the Armenians to live upon during the long and bitter winter. Even a persecuted Armenian cannot hope to maintain his family on wheat straw.“Now, we have this condition at the present moment in Armenia: The crop planted this year was entirely inadequate to the needs of the population, and when the Kurds got through pasturing their cattle in the growing fields they harvested the ripened grain for their own use, leaving only dry grass for the Armenians. The systematic persecutions of the people, the exactions of the tax-gatherers, and the repeated robberies by the Kurds have left the Armenians absolutely penniless and foodless. Utterly unable to maintain life in their nearly ruined and wasted villages, the country people are wandering about from place to place, and crowding into the cities. There is no work for them to be had,and no chance of earning enough to keep starvation at bay.“It is for the youngest Christian nation on earth to say whether the oldest shall perish and be no more, and whether the followers of Mohammed shall be the sole inhabitants of that land which, in the beginning of all things, was the Garden of Eden. If we turn a deaf ear now to the supplications of the starving thousands of fellow-Christians in Eastern Turkey, the coming of spring will see the troublous Armenian question forever at rest. There will be no more Armenian question, for there may be no more Armenians.“If, on the contrary, the practical Christians of our own land desire to assist in preserving this ancient Christian race in the land in which it took descent from the grandson of Noah, the way is clear. A little help extended now, will not only save the lives of those who are dropping dead of hunger from day to day, but will provide work during the coming winter.“I have necessarily been brief, and have dwelt entirely upon the starvation in Armenia, because it is the most urgent feature of the situation. I have not touched upon the Sassoun massacre, because as the Grand Vizier of Turkey truthfully says, ‘that is an old story.’ The victims of Sassoun were in many respects more fortunate than their fellows, for they had at least the privilege of dying quickly. They escaped persecution, torture, and starvation. There are very many hopeless creatures in Armenia to-day who would welcome a second Sassoun as an easy release from the burden and shame of living.“As to the cause of the persecution which has broughttwo hundred thousand human beings to the actual brink of starvation, there can be but one explanation. The Armenians are Christians. Should they become Mohammedans their troubles would vanish, and return no more. It is for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that they are persecuted unto death.”A resident of Moush confirmed all that has been stated regarding the widespread suffering and destitution. He said:“After the departure of the Kurdish tribes, which had perpetrated the massacres of Sassoun, the survivors left their hiding-places. One group of these people settled themselves on the plateaux, in the defiles, and in the forests of Sassoun, whilst the greater part emigrated to Moush, whence they were soon scattered among the Armenian villages of the plain. The Armenians sheltered and fed these emigrants as long as they had the means; but being themselves doubly tried by the want which reigns on all sides, and for the past two years and more, in the country, they soon found it impossible for them to supply the needs of these emigrants. The latter were obliged to move away to the mountains, where they are finding their food from herbs and leaves, or else to beg in the villages, where they are hardly finding a morsel of bread.”The Kurds took advantage of the sufferings of the people of Sassoun to carry on a trade in white people. A young Armenian woman of Sassoun, was sold as a slave by these nomads. Another was sold to an inhabitant of the village of Hadji-Osman-Bey, and taken to Diarbekir. A little boy and little girl were bought for one hundred and thirty piastres of a Kurd named Mehmed; this amount included besides, the price of adonkey. There were other instances also of the same character.The following letter from the Duke of Westminster to the editor of an American paper, afforded new evidence of the widespread destitution in Armenia:“Sir:—There is an additional distressing phase connected with the sufferings of the Armenians consequent on the losses they have sustained at the hands of the Turks, which calls for consideration and assistance from those who are ever ready to relieve distress in whatever part of the world. Vice-Consul Shipley reports from Moush, that ‘there is great distress, amounting in a great number of cases to abject destitution, among the fugitives from Sassoun, of which he and his colleagues have had many opportunities of convincing themselves from personal observation.’ Mr. Hallward, Her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Van, testifies that the need for relief is unquestioned; that there is an enormous amount of destitution, and that there will certainly be more before next winter.“This applies, we are assured, to the province of Bitlis, and to a large extent to Erzeroum, where there are survivors of the Sassoun massacre—mostly women and children who have no one to provide for them—scattered about. A year ago these people were comparatively prosperous and comfortable, but are now barefoot and in rags, begging their daily bread from those who are not much better off than themselves.“Consul Graves forwards a private letter describing the deplorable condition of the people at Talvorig:—‘There are about eight hundred and fifty of these houseless wanderers now living in the woods and mountains, in caves and hollow trees, half naked, and some, indeed,entirely without covering for their nakedness. Bread they have not tasted for months, and curdled milk they only dream of, living, as they do, upon greens and the leaves of trees. There are two varieties of greens which are preferred, but these are disappearing, as they wither at this season. Living on such food, they become sickly; their skin has turned yellow, their strength is gone, their bodies are swollen, and fever is rife among them.’“In addition to these, there are thousands of refugees who, compelled by poverty and danger to abandon their village homes, have flocked into the towns where they hope to find personal safety and charity to keep them alive.“The Committee of the Armenian Relief Fund has already remitted £3,000 to Sir Philip Currie, Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople, for the distribution of food and clothing in the distressed districts, and further aid is very urgently required.“Westminster.”Grosvenor House, London, W., Sept. 20th, 1895.Probably the best known and most experienced of all the Americans who have served in the missionary field in Asia Minor is Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. the venerable founder of Roberts College, Constantinople. Dr. Hamlin, has a lifelong acquaintance with the Armenian question in its various phases, and is a strong champion of the right of this oldest Christian nation on earth to be permitted to live and worship in the faith of their fathers. Conversing on the subject, Dr. Hamlin said:“The condition of affairs in that country has not been exaggerated in the printed reports. I have latelyfinished reading the MS. of some two hundred letters from missionaries, a very large part of them dealing with the oppressions and sufferings of the Armenians, which were of a most frightful character. The poor creatures must have help before the winter opens in earnest, or they will perish. An Armenian winter is usually very severe, the snow lying on the ground from four to six feet in depth and the cold being intense.“The whole civilized Christian world must help these people—they must be saved from death and assisted over the winter. They can look in no other direction for help, for there is no sympathy and assistance to be had from Turkey. Indeed, the policy of the Sultan’s government is apparently dictated by a desire to efface the Armenian people altogether—at least those of them who will not accept Mohammed. When you talk sympathizingly about these people, a Turk will say in surprise: ‘Why do you speak in behalf of such worthless trash and try to save them? They can save themselves—all they need do is to accept Islam and then they are safe and out of trouble.’“And so,” continued Dr. Hamlin, “A Turk regards it as strange that an Armenian should refuse to purchase his life at the cost of his faith; but there are some among them who take a different view. Some of the Turkish soldiers who shared in the terrible atrocities lately perpetrated on the Armenian Christians have been stricken by remorse afterward. One soldier, who had borne his part in several horrible butcheries of women and children, was so troubled that he could not sleep. He had visions of his victims that ultimately drove him insane.”Dr. Hamlin spoke in the highest terms of Miss Kimball and her relief work, in conjunction with the other missionaries at Van. “No one knew the needs of the suffering people better, or was better qualified to deal with the present very trying situation. It is the duty of the Christians of America to help them as far as we can help them. The Turks will embarrass the work if they can; they wish these people to die. In the whole region of Sassoun—comprised of about one hundred villages—forty or fifty villages have been annihilated.” A letter from Mr. Cole, a missionary who is employed in relief work, stated that he visited a village of one hundred and seventy-five houses, every one of which had been destroyed. The Turks would not even permit him to erect a shanty as a defence against the weather, lest some Armenian should get the use of it. They wished these people to die out of cold or starvation.England, whose official support of Turkey made it in large measure responsible for the wrongs and sufferings of the Armenians, now moved for reform in that unfortunate country. At the same time, the English people were helping the Armenians by contributions. On the occasion of opening a bazaar held at Chester, for the benefit of the Armenian sufferers, Mrs. Gladstone gave expression to the popular sentiment prevailing in England regarding Armenia’s condition in these terms: “No words of mine are needed to describe the frightful need of help. You are all aware of the terrible details. I plead to-day in behalf of the poor sufferers—that we may be instrumental in allaying their sufferings. As my husband says, we cannot dictate to the government as to the time, but we pray that the Powers may soon take action to end Armenia’s woes.”But while this most blessed work of caring for these hunger-stricken, homeless and wretched Armenians was going on, the storm burst upon them in all its fury. The appetite of the Moslem had merely been whetted, not satiated.Following the massacres in Trebizond and Erzeroum all the villages about them were almost depopulated, the orders for the slaughter of the Christians, as the Moslem troops admit, having come from Constantinople. At Sivas the massacre was terrible, and a like horror occurred at Marash. The ungovernable fury of the Turks spared neither age or sex, and the brutalities practiced upon women and children could not be described. Bodies of little children, dead and mutilated, were found in the fields after the slaughter had ended. Large numbers of the victims of these atrocities died the death of martyrs. They fell in the Moslem war for the extermination of the religion of Jesus in Asia Minor.At Diarbekir, where the victims were numbered by thousands, there was abundant evidence that the massacre was premeditated. It was claimed that the Armenians had attacked a Moslem mosque, whereas the facts, as afterwards disclosed, showed the Kurds and Turks to have been the sole and intentional aggressors. The massacre began on Friday, and continued on Saturday and Sunday with insatiable ferocity.Meanwhile, the story of what was taking place in the villages and hamlets of the different districts had not reached the public ear. When it came, it disclosed a tale of suffering and savagism that had scarcely a parallel. Many hundreds of villages were literally swept out of existence. The story of one is the story of all: the Kurds, directed from higher sources, swoopingdown, rounding up the cattle, slaying the strong men, outraging and abducting the women, and killing even the children, concluded the satanic work by burning everything that would consume. In many places the Kurdish troops came equipped with empty sacks strapped to their saddles for the purpose of carrying off the plunder. The Kurdish chiefs openly declared that they were ordered to slay the Christians and take the plunder for their pay.Rev. John Wright, another missionary, wrote: “In one instance, the Kurds, after compelling a family to provide food for their horses and themselves, smothered a babe which was asleep in the cradle, cut it in pieces and roasted it before the fire on their weapons, and then made the mother eat the flesh. In another case, when the Kurds had killed an Armenian, they joined hands and danced about the corpse, singing a song of triumph. They then cut up the corpse, boiled it, and forced the Armenians residing there to eat the flesh. Flocks were driven off, grain burned, and houses razed to the ground and burned. Many women died from fright, and the children also died from fright or exposure to the cold. We found that nearly half the members of the families we met had perished during the flight. They had great difficulty in securing food to eat. All of them had substantially the same harrowing tale to tell. About ten thousand refugees are estimated to have passed through the district of Khoi.”Eight of the villages near Van were totally depopulated and all their people slain or rendered fugitives, except the young women who were seized and taken to Kurdish harems. In the Van provinces nearly two hundred villages were partially destroyed.During the last weeks in December, 1895, the carnival of slaughter continued with tireless energy and terrible ferocity by the Turks and Kurds. From every side came reports of atrocities by Turks, Kurds, and Circassians—villages swept by fire, the men massacred, the women either slain or reserved for a fate worse than death. Thousands of women were carried away captive to become inmates of some vile Moslem harem. An illustration of the Turkish method of extermination was found in the case of the village of Hoh, in the Sandjak district. At first the aghas (or local magistrates) promised to protect the Christians, but when they saw villages burning in every direction they refused to keep their word. All the Christians were told that, under the pain of death, they must accept Islam. They were assembled at the Mosque, and there eighty young men were picked out and led outside the village—for slaughter. Eight escaped, sixty-two were killed, and ten wounded. The young women of the village were taken to Turkish harems, and the survivors of the Christian population were scattered among other villages.In every district there was the same tragic story of massacre, outrage, pillage, and abduction; monasteries sacked, and Christian pastors and people butchered. In many villages the Armenian priests were among the number who laid down their lives as a testimony to the faith. In almost every village the strong men and youths were killed, and in nearly every case they met death with the fortitude of true martyrs. Many were killed with horrible tortures, because of their refusal to deny Christ. Among those who so perished were the Armenian pastors at Khizan, Halakeny, and Koh.Although in official communications the atrocities were denied by the Turkish government, the statements issued by the Porte were nowhere credited. Denials of the massacres of Trebizond and Erzeroum were circulated, despite the statements of American and European Consular officials, missionaries, and Armenian survivors, supplemented by the photographs of the piles of dead in the streets and cemeteries. A number of Armenian citizens were arrested by the authorities after the Trebizond massacre, on the pretext that they caused the riot, and six of them were condemned to death.In January, 1896, the Mesopotamian Christians of Mardin were suddenly attacked by a large body of Kurds, the town being surrounded. News had already been received of the burning of many villages and the massacre of thousands of peaceful peasants, but the Mardin attack came like a thunderbolt. Many hundreds were butchered in a few hours. A number of native ministers of the Gospel were slain.The town was a scene of terror and desolation; groups of weeping mothers and crying children sheltered themselves in the houses, while all around, and even upon the floors were the telltale pools of blood that showed where the martyrs fell under the Kurdish swords. Dead bodies, clotted with blood that had flowed from great gaping wounds, lay everywhere in sight. There were other horrors that added to the terror—the attacks on the native women and girls, who were subjected to nameless abuse.The massacres at Mardin and Gemerek resulted in leaving the survivors in those once populous villages in a condition that threatened to exterminate them bystarvation. The help which was cabled to them from the relief fund was welcomed with a gratitude that can hardly be expressed in words. With the horror of their recent woes still unrelieved, the aid seemed as if heaven-sent. Erzeroum was still full of wounded, and rows upon rows of blackened ruins alone showed where its homes once stood. There were many hundreds homeless. Harpoot, too, had a large number exposed to hunger and cold. At Diarbekir the destitution was probably worst of all, for both in the city and villages, the slaughter was relentless, and the survivors had nothing to expect but death by slow degrees—their little ones perishing of hunger and cold beside them. At Erzinjian, where many martyrs fell, the remaining Christians were scattered around, hiding where they could, like hunted wild beasts.After these massacres most piteous appeals were received in this country from relatives in the stricken towns and villages. A letter sent by a poor mother from Gurun to a relative here, said:“We have only to say that I and my child are living. No male population has been left in our town. They have killed my father. I took the child with me and sought refuge in the church. Our cousin also has been killed. Of our three families, only one family has partly a shelter, but we have not even a piece of a blanket to cover our nakedness! We have nothing to eat. The government is giving a small piece of bread for each living person. No physician has been left. Our child has not a book to study from or to read. Everything has been destroyed. They have plundered even the goods which were concealed in the ground. There is no life for us here. In our three families,there is not a lamp to give light. For God’s sake send help or else we will die of starvation.”Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.A letter from a young man in the same town to an Armenian in New York, said:“You have no doubt heard of the terrible events that have taken place in our town. They have not left anything in our house. They killed your brother and sister. They have burned our stable and woodhouse and our winter house. We are in terrible distress. We have no bedding, no clothes. We have not even the means to procure a piece of dry bread. Rich and poor are all alike, and our generous neighbors are not any better off than ourselves, so that they cannot help us. No merchant or broker has been left.”A few extracts from another report of Mr. W. W. Howard, sent from Urumia in December, 1895, will fitly close this chapter of woe and destitution.“The American mission work at Van has been suspended, and all the schools closed. The closing of the schools, however, has not been confined to the American mission, but has extended to every school in the city, of whatever race or creed. All the shops have likewise been closed, both Armenian and Turkish. Even the Turkish shops in the bazaar proper have been shut, so great is the fear of massacre. The Turkish Government ordered the Armenian merchants to open their shops, and the Armenians obeyed, but when the shops were opened they were entirely empty, the goods having been removed to the merchants’ houses. The merchants then sat in their empty stores with nothing to sell.“With the money already sent to her, Miss Kimball has done a large work in the supplying of bread for thestarving, and she is now at work on a soup kitchen. Her plan of relief is to furnish work to such of the poor as are able to work. Business in Van and the province of Van has been dead for months. Nothing is being bought or sold except the simplest articles of food that will sustain life. Miss Kimball is, therefore, distributing these articles of clothing free to the wretched village refugees who are flocking to Van in rags and nakedness.“In raiding the villages the Hamidieh cavalry not only destroyed the houses, drove off the sheep and cattle and removed every portable piece of property, but actually stripped the villagers of the clothes on their backs. The unfortunate peasants, men, women and children, were thrust out into the wilderness of snow-covered mountains without clothes to cover them or food to eat. How many of these poor creatures left bloody tracks on snow and ice; how many dropped by the wayside to go down to death in a shroud of snow and a tomb of ice no man may know. The snow will not give up its dead for long months to come.“Are the Christian people of America willing that this thing shall continue?”

CHAPTER XIII.THE REIGN OF TERROR—VAN AND MOUSH.Much earnest and faithful missionary work had been done in the cities and towns of the various Armenian provinces, before the storm of desolation swept over them. Evangelistic, educational and medical lines had been followed and now the missionaries, who had been laboring in a land where crops had failed and where the inhabitants were leaving their homes to escape starvation, were to face massacre, pillage and horrors, such as the world had not beheld for centuries. No words of praise are adequate to tell the story of the devotion which kept them at their posts, or of the succor they extended to the victims of the Sultan’s hate.A vivid picture of the desolation that everywhere prevailed, was given by one who was engaged in the work of distributing relief money in July, 1895.Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.“Semal and Shenig are situated in a continuous, moderately wide valley, with a little reach of rolling land between the encircling mountains where about half the hill fields are growing green with a sort of millet that matures in a few weeks and which the sufferers were persuaded to come and sow, with oxen loaned by the poor, but generous villagers of the Moush plain. These few fields and few people at work upon them, were all there was to relieve the sad desolation which reigned over all. Buildings, once the homes of happy and prosperous countrymen, now presented only ruinedwalls with not a chip to show they had ever roofs to cover them, save a few, of which a little corner was rudely covered last fall, so that the wretched owners could find imperfect shelter during last winter. The torch of the incendiary soldiers had consumed every vestige of wood from all these scattered homes. The church at the central hamlet, where Der Hohannes (whose eyes were bored out and his throat pierced, while yet alive, by the cruel soldiers), used to officiate, being of stone, was not consumed, being the only roofed building in all the valley, after that flood of carnage had swept past. Near this church we pitched our tent, and began to study the situation.“Beneath our eye, in these two villages, had already gathered over one thousand people, whom it was our work to try and set upon their feet again, so that they could start once more on the uphill road towards prosperity. Could a community be conceived of more completely prostrated? The sheep and cattle, which composed their wealth, in the hands of Kurds, as also their few simple household belongings, cooking vessels, clothing, bedding, etc., and whatever money they may have managed to hoard. Those who fled with their lives found themselves nearly as destitute of all that makes life comfortable as the day they were born.English liberality has already spent five thousand dollars, and the authorities gave reluctant consent to our coming up to distribute it. We located here at Semal, while the Turkish committee has its headquarters at Shenig, half an hour distant. It was evident that the thing to be first accomplished was the erection of houses, and only a few weeks remained in which it would be accomplished, so we set about persuading thepeople to begin preparing their walls for the timbers the government had promised them.“Of the survivors of the massacre (of 1894), five thousand have already gathered to try and reëstablish their old homes, while possibly another eleven hundred may still be scattered over the world. It is impossible as yet to give the exact number of the slaughtered, but it will probably be not far from 4,000. We feel that unless a different status from the present can be secured to distribute anything to these people beyond daily food, is simply to run the risk of its falling into the hands of the Kurds. We have distributed a good many tools, with which the people are gathering hay, in hope of having some animal to eat it during the winter. We should be glad to furnish them with tools for laying up the walls of their houses, and even pay the wages of masons to come and help them. It is all we can do now to prevent the people from fleeing again to the plain, when all their crops would go for naught.”Near Harpoot eleven villages were compelled to accept Mohammedanism, and also near Van the entire population of two villages were forced to change their religion. Eight villages near Van were entirely depopulated. Most of the inhabitants were killed, and those who survived escaped to the snow-covered mountains, where they wandered with their children, naked and starving. The men who were forced to accept Mohammedanism were compelled to take their own sisters-in-law, whose husbands have been killed, to wife—a practice most horrible to the Christians, who hated polygamy. They were also compelled to plunder and kill their Armenian brethren to show that their conversion to Mohammedanism was genuine. The young maidensof these villages were carried into the Pasha’s harem. The Kurds attacked the same villages over and over to make their work of destruction complete, and yet the Sultan ordered his ambassador in Washington to deny that there were any forcible conversions to Islam.All accounts received of the hardships endured by the Armenians were distressing in the extreme. Many of the refugees, weakened by want and exposure, were dying. Fully one thousand Armenian families in the province of Van alone were in want of food. A majority of these families lived on roots and herbs, the few fortunate ones had bread made of clover seed, linseed or flax, mixed with grass and roots. In the district of Moks, three-fourths of the villagers left their homes and were in danger of starving. In Shadakh, two-thirds of the population were homeless wanderers. Beggars swarmed in the streets of Van, but so general was the poverty that little help could be afforded. So widespread was the want that many declared, in bitterness of heart, “there is no food in all the length and breadth of Armenia”—which was long ago the Garden of Eden. Many poor were fed daily at the American mission in Van.America and Armenia both owe more than words can ever express to the energy, devotion and abundant generosity that sent Mr. W. W. Howard, in 1895, to investigate the situation in Armenia. In a later chapter the story of the great relief work will be told, meanwhile Mr. Howard will tell his story. “I have just returned from the interior of the devastated region of Armenia and the English language is impotent to produce a true picture of the actual condition of that distressed country, and a just regard for the conventionalitiesof civilized speech will not permit that the whole truth be told. The refined Christian mind can understand wickedness and iniquity up to a certain point, but beyond that point, it either refuses to believe, or it is incapable of receiving additional impressions.“There are in Armenia at the present moment at least two hundred thousand persons fighting a death fight with famine! In the one province of Van, which is the center of Armenia, there are fully one hundred thousand persons, out of a total Armenian population of one hundred and forty-five thousand, in actual want of food.“Many have already died of starvation, and thousands of villagers are barely keeping soul and body together by eating roots and herbs and sort of bread made of clover seed, flax or linseed meal, mixed with edible grass. I have brought to peaceful, prosperous America specimen loaves of this hunger-bread. Starving villagers, reduced to the verge of despair, are crowding into the cities to beg for food and work. Three thousand unwilling beggars walk the streets of the city of Van, like spectres of famine, asking bread from door to door, who six months ago were comparatively prosperous. Others, too proud to beg, but in as desperate condition, crouch in their ruined homes, waiting for a merciful death to end their sufferings.“These are not hallucinations on my part, but are things which I myself have lately seen with my own eyes. Unless these wretched people receive immediate help, they will perish of starvation. They must have food and clothing or they cannot possibly survive the winter. They are now living on roots and herbs andedible grass, together with this terrible hunger-bread, the mere odor of which is enough to make a strong man shudder; but when winter begins, in October, the supply of edible grass and roots and herbs will be cut off. What will become of them then?“The Armenians have no wheat, and no money with which to buy food. The Kurds and the Turks have taken everything, and the Armenians have nothing.“The Armenians planted only half a crop this year, owing to the persecutions and exactions which beset them on all sides. In the early summer, when the young grain was green, the Kurds pastured their buffalos and their cattle in the growing wheat. Much of the crop was thus destroyed. Later, when that which remained of the wheat was ready for the harvest, the Kurds came down, cut off the heads of the ripened grain, and left the worthless stubble for the Armenians to live upon during the long and bitter winter. Even a persecuted Armenian cannot hope to maintain his family on wheat straw.“Now, we have this condition at the present moment in Armenia: The crop planted this year was entirely inadequate to the needs of the population, and when the Kurds got through pasturing their cattle in the growing fields they harvested the ripened grain for their own use, leaving only dry grass for the Armenians. The systematic persecutions of the people, the exactions of the tax-gatherers, and the repeated robberies by the Kurds have left the Armenians absolutely penniless and foodless. Utterly unable to maintain life in their nearly ruined and wasted villages, the country people are wandering about from place to place, and crowding into the cities. There is no work for them to be had,and no chance of earning enough to keep starvation at bay.“It is for the youngest Christian nation on earth to say whether the oldest shall perish and be no more, and whether the followers of Mohammed shall be the sole inhabitants of that land which, in the beginning of all things, was the Garden of Eden. If we turn a deaf ear now to the supplications of the starving thousands of fellow-Christians in Eastern Turkey, the coming of spring will see the troublous Armenian question forever at rest. There will be no more Armenian question, for there may be no more Armenians.“If, on the contrary, the practical Christians of our own land desire to assist in preserving this ancient Christian race in the land in which it took descent from the grandson of Noah, the way is clear. A little help extended now, will not only save the lives of those who are dropping dead of hunger from day to day, but will provide work during the coming winter.“I have necessarily been brief, and have dwelt entirely upon the starvation in Armenia, because it is the most urgent feature of the situation. I have not touched upon the Sassoun massacre, because as the Grand Vizier of Turkey truthfully says, ‘that is an old story.’ The victims of Sassoun were in many respects more fortunate than their fellows, for they had at least the privilege of dying quickly. They escaped persecution, torture, and starvation. There are very many hopeless creatures in Armenia to-day who would welcome a second Sassoun as an easy release from the burden and shame of living.“As to the cause of the persecution which has broughttwo hundred thousand human beings to the actual brink of starvation, there can be but one explanation. The Armenians are Christians. Should they become Mohammedans their troubles would vanish, and return no more. It is for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that they are persecuted unto death.”A resident of Moush confirmed all that has been stated regarding the widespread suffering and destitution. He said:“After the departure of the Kurdish tribes, which had perpetrated the massacres of Sassoun, the survivors left their hiding-places. One group of these people settled themselves on the plateaux, in the defiles, and in the forests of Sassoun, whilst the greater part emigrated to Moush, whence they were soon scattered among the Armenian villages of the plain. The Armenians sheltered and fed these emigrants as long as they had the means; but being themselves doubly tried by the want which reigns on all sides, and for the past two years and more, in the country, they soon found it impossible for them to supply the needs of these emigrants. The latter were obliged to move away to the mountains, where they are finding their food from herbs and leaves, or else to beg in the villages, where they are hardly finding a morsel of bread.”The Kurds took advantage of the sufferings of the people of Sassoun to carry on a trade in white people. A young Armenian woman of Sassoun, was sold as a slave by these nomads. Another was sold to an inhabitant of the village of Hadji-Osman-Bey, and taken to Diarbekir. A little boy and little girl were bought for one hundred and thirty piastres of a Kurd named Mehmed; this amount included besides, the price of adonkey. There were other instances also of the same character.The following letter from the Duke of Westminster to the editor of an American paper, afforded new evidence of the widespread destitution in Armenia:“Sir:—There is an additional distressing phase connected with the sufferings of the Armenians consequent on the losses they have sustained at the hands of the Turks, which calls for consideration and assistance from those who are ever ready to relieve distress in whatever part of the world. Vice-Consul Shipley reports from Moush, that ‘there is great distress, amounting in a great number of cases to abject destitution, among the fugitives from Sassoun, of which he and his colleagues have had many opportunities of convincing themselves from personal observation.’ Mr. Hallward, Her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Van, testifies that the need for relief is unquestioned; that there is an enormous amount of destitution, and that there will certainly be more before next winter.“This applies, we are assured, to the province of Bitlis, and to a large extent to Erzeroum, where there are survivors of the Sassoun massacre—mostly women and children who have no one to provide for them—scattered about. A year ago these people were comparatively prosperous and comfortable, but are now barefoot and in rags, begging their daily bread from those who are not much better off than themselves.“Consul Graves forwards a private letter describing the deplorable condition of the people at Talvorig:—‘There are about eight hundred and fifty of these houseless wanderers now living in the woods and mountains, in caves and hollow trees, half naked, and some, indeed,entirely without covering for their nakedness. Bread they have not tasted for months, and curdled milk they only dream of, living, as they do, upon greens and the leaves of trees. There are two varieties of greens which are preferred, but these are disappearing, as they wither at this season. Living on such food, they become sickly; their skin has turned yellow, their strength is gone, their bodies are swollen, and fever is rife among them.’“In addition to these, there are thousands of refugees who, compelled by poverty and danger to abandon their village homes, have flocked into the towns where they hope to find personal safety and charity to keep them alive.“The Committee of the Armenian Relief Fund has already remitted £3,000 to Sir Philip Currie, Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople, for the distribution of food and clothing in the distressed districts, and further aid is very urgently required.“Westminster.”Grosvenor House, London, W., Sept. 20th, 1895.Probably the best known and most experienced of all the Americans who have served in the missionary field in Asia Minor is Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. the venerable founder of Roberts College, Constantinople. Dr. Hamlin, has a lifelong acquaintance with the Armenian question in its various phases, and is a strong champion of the right of this oldest Christian nation on earth to be permitted to live and worship in the faith of their fathers. Conversing on the subject, Dr. Hamlin said:“The condition of affairs in that country has not been exaggerated in the printed reports. I have latelyfinished reading the MS. of some two hundred letters from missionaries, a very large part of them dealing with the oppressions and sufferings of the Armenians, which were of a most frightful character. The poor creatures must have help before the winter opens in earnest, or they will perish. An Armenian winter is usually very severe, the snow lying on the ground from four to six feet in depth and the cold being intense.“The whole civilized Christian world must help these people—they must be saved from death and assisted over the winter. They can look in no other direction for help, for there is no sympathy and assistance to be had from Turkey. Indeed, the policy of the Sultan’s government is apparently dictated by a desire to efface the Armenian people altogether—at least those of them who will not accept Mohammed. When you talk sympathizingly about these people, a Turk will say in surprise: ‘Why do you speak in behalf of such worthless trash and try to save them? They can save themselves—all they need do is to accept Islam and then they are safe and out of trouble.’“And so,” continued Dr. Hamlin, “A Turk regards it as strange that an Armenian should refuse to purchase his life at the cost of his faith; but there are some among them who take a different view. Some of the Turkish soldiers who shared in the terrible atrocities lately perpetrated on the Armenian Christians have been stricken by remorse afterward. One soldier, who had borne his part in several horrible butcheries of women and children, was so troubled that he could not sleep. He had visions of his victims that ultimately drove him insane.”Dr. Hamlin spoke in the highest terms of Miss Kimball and her relief work, in conjunction with the other missionaries at Van. “No one knew the needs of the suffering people better, or was better qualified to deal with the present very trying situation. It is the duty of the Christians of America to help them as far as we can help them. The Turks will embarrass the work if they can; they wish these people to die. In the whole region of Sassoun—comprised of about one hundred villages—forty or fifty villages have been annihilated.” A letter from Mr. Cole, a missionary who is employed in relief work, stated that he visited a village of one hundred and seventy-five houses, every one of which had been destroyed. The Turks would not even permit him to erect a shanty as a defence against the weather, lest some Armenian should get the use of it. They wished these people to die out of cold or starvation.England, whose official support of Turkey made it in large measure responsible for the wrongs and sufferings of the Armenians, now moved for reform in that unfortunate country. At the same time, the English people were helping the Armenians by contributions. On the occasion of opening a bazaar held at Chester, for the benefit of the Armenian sufferers, Mrs. Gladstone gave expression to the popular sentiment prevailing in England regarding Armenia’s condition in these terms: “No words of mine are needed to describe the frightful need of help. You are all aware of the terrible details. I plead to-day in behalf of the poor sufferers—that we may be instrumental in allaying their sufferings. As my husband says, we cannot dictate to the government as to the time, but we pray that the Powers may soon take action to end Armenia’s woes.”But while this most blessed work of caring for these hunger-stricken, homeless and wretched Armenians was going on, the storm burst upon them in all its fury. The appetite of the Moslem had merely been whetted, not satiated.Following the massacres in Trebizond and Erzeroum all the villages about them were almost depopulated, the orders for the slaughter of the Christians, as the Moslem troops admit, having come from Constantinople. At Sivas the massacre was terrible, and a like horror occurred at Marash. The ungovernable fury of the Turks spared neither age or sex, and the brutalities practiced upon women and children could not be described. Bodies of little children, dead and mutilated, were found in the fields after the slaughter had ended. Large numbers of the victims of these atrocities died the death of martyrs. They fell in the Moslem war for the extermination of the religion of Jesus in Asia Minor.At Diarbekir, where the victims were numbered by thousands, there was abundant evidence that the massacre was premeditated. It was claimed that the Armenians had attacked a Moslem mosque, whereas the facts, as afterwards disclosed, showed the Kurds and Turks to have been the sole and intentional aggressors. The massacre began on Friday, and continued on Saturday and Sunday with insatiable ferocity.Meanwhile, the story of what was taking place in the villages and hamlets of the different districts had not reached the public ear. When it came, it disclosed a tale of suffering and savagism that had scarcely a parallel. Many hundreds of villages were literally swept out of existence. The story of one is the story of all: the Kurds, directed from higher sources, swoopingdown, rounding up the cattle, slaying the strong men, outraging and abducting the women, and killing even the children, concluded the satanic work by burning everything that would consume. In many places the Kurdish troops came equipped with empty sacks strapped to their saddles for the purpose of carrying off the plunder. The Kurdish chiefs openly declared that they were ordered to slay the Christians and take the plunder for their pay.Rev. John Wright, another missionary, wrote: “In one instance, the Kurds, after compelling a family to provide food for their horses and themselves, smothered a babe which was asleep in the cradle, cut it in pieces and roasted it before the fire on their weapons, and then made the mother eat the flesh. In another case, when the Kurds had killed an Armenian, they joined hands and danced about the corpse, singing a song of triumph. They then cut up the corpse, boiled it, and forced the Armenians residing there to eat the flesh. Flocks were driven off, grain burned, and houses razed to the ground and burned. Many women died from fright, and the children also died from fright or exposure to the cold. We found that nearly half the members of the families we met had perished during the flight. They had great difficulty in securing food to eat. All of them had substantially the same harrowing tale to tell. About ten thousand refugees are estimated to have passed through the district of Khoi.”Eight of the villages near Van were totally depopulated and all their people slain or rendered fugitives, except the young women who were seized and taken to Kurdish harems. In the Van provinces nearly two hundred villages were partially destroyed.During the last weeks in December, 1895, the carnival of slaughter continued with tireless energy and terrible ferocity by the Turks and Kurds. From every side came reports of atrocities by Turks, Kurds, and Circassians—villages swept by fire, the men massacred, the women either slain or reserved for a fate worse than death. Thousands of women were carried away captive to become inmates of some vile Moslem harem. An illustration of the Turkish method of extermination was found in the case of the village of Hoh, in the Sandjak district. At first the aghas (or local magistrates) promised to protect the Christians, but when they saw villages burning in every direction they refused to keep their word. All the Christians were told that, under the pain of death, they must accept Islam. They were assembled at the Mosque, and there eighty young men were picked out and led outside the village—for slaughter. Eight escaped, sixty-two were killed, and ten wounded. The young women of the village were taken to Turkish harems, and the survivors of the Christian population were scattered among other villages.In every district there was the same tragic story of massacre, outrage, pillage, and abduction; monasteries sacked, and Christian pastors and people butchered. In many villages the Armenian priests were among the number who laid down their lives as a testimony to the faith. In almost every village the strong men and youths were killed, and in nearly every case they met death with the fortitude of true martyrs. Many were killed with horrible tortures, because of their refusal to deny Christ. Among those who so perished were the Armenian pastors at Khizan, Halakeny, and Koh.Although in official communications the atrocities were denied by the Turkish government, the statements issued by the Porte were nowhere credited. Denials of the massacres of Trebizond and Erzeroum were circulated, despite the statements of American and European Consular officials, missionaries, and Armenian survivors, supplemented by the photographs of the piles of dead in the streets and cemeteries. A number of Armenian citizens were arrested by the authorities after the Trebizond massacre, on the pretext that they caused the riot, and six of them were condemned to death.In January, 1896, the Mesopotamian Christians of Mardin were suddenly attacked by a large body of Kurds, the town being surrounded. News had already been received of the burning of many villages and the massacre of thousands of peaceful peasants, but the Mardin attack came like a thunderbolt. Many hundreds were butchered in a few hours. A number of native ministers of the Gospel were slain.The town was a scene of terror and desolation; groups of weeping mothers and crying children sheltered themselves in the houses, while all around, and even upon the floors were the telltale pools of blood that showed where the martyrs fell under the Kurdish swords. Dead bodies, clotted with blood that had flowed from great gaping wounds, lay everywhere in sight. There were other horrors that added to the terror—the attacks on the native women and girls, who were subjected to nameless abuse.The massacres at Mardin and Gemerek resulted in leaving the survivors in those once populous villages in a condition that threatened to exterminate them bystarvation. The help which was cabled to them from the relief fund was welcomed with a gratitude that can hardly be expressed in words. With the horror of their recent woes still unrelieved, the aid seemed as if heaven-sent. Erzeroum was still full of wounded, and rows upon rows of blackened ruins alone showed where its homes once stood. There were many hundreds homeless. Harpoot, too, had a large number exposed to hunger and cold. At Diarbekir the destitution was probably worst of all, for both in the city and villages, the slaughter was relentless, and the survivors had nothing to expect but death by slow degrees—their little ones perishing of hunger and cold beside them. At Erzinjian, where many martyrs fell, the remaining Christians were scattered around, hiding where they could, like hunted wild beasts.After these massacres most piteous appeals were received in this country from relatives in the stricken towns and villages. A letter sent by a poor mother from Gurun to a relative here, said:“We have only to say that I and my child are living. No male population has been left in our town. They have killed my father. I took the child with me and sought refuge in the church. Our cousin also has been killed. Of our three families, only one family has partly a shelter, but we have not even a piece of a blanket to cover our nakedness! We have nothing to eat. The government is giving a small piece of bread for each living person. No physician has been left. Our child has not a book to study from or to read. Everything has been destroyed. They have plundered even the goods which were concealed in the ground. There is no life for us here. In our three families,there is not a lamp to give light. For God’s sake send help or else we will die of starvation.”Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.A letter from a young man in the same town to an Armenian in New York, said:“You have no doubt heard of the terrible events that have taken place in our town. They have not left anything in our house. They killed your brother and sister. They have burned our stable and woodhouse and our winter house. We are in terrible distress. We have no bedding, no clothes. We have not even the means to procure a piece of dry bread. Rich and poor are all alike, and our generous neighbors are not any better off than ourselves, so that they cannot help us. No merchant or broker has been left.”A few extracts from another report of Mr. W. W. Howard, sent from Urumia in December, 1895, will fitly close this chapter of woe and destitution.“The American mission work at Van has been suspended, and all the schools closed. The closing of the schools, however, has not been confined to the American mission, but has extended to every school in the city, of whatever race or creed. All the shops have likewise been closed, both Armenian and Turkish. Even the Turkish shops in the bazaar proper have been shut, so great is the fear of massacre. The Turkish Government ordered the Armenian merchants to open their shops, and the Armenians obeyed, but when the shops were opened they were entirely empty, the goods having been removed to the merchants’ houses. The merchants then sat in their empty stores with nothing to sell.“With the money already sent to her, Miss Kimball has done a large work in the supplying of bread for thestarving, and she is now at work on a soup kitchen. Her plan of relief is to furnish work to such of the poor as are able to work. Business in Van and the province of Van has been dead for months. Nothing is being bought or sold except the simplest articles of food that will sustain life. Miss Kimball is, therefore, distributing these articles of clothing free to the wretched village refugees who are flocking to Van in rags and nakedness.“In raiding the villages the Hamidieh cavalry not only destroyed the houses, drove off the sheep and cattle and removed every portable piece of property, but actually stripped the villagers of the clothes on their backs. The unfortunate peasants, men, women and children, were thrust out into the wilderness of snow-covered mountains without clothes to cover them or food to eat. How many of these poor creatures left bloody tracks on snow and ice; how many dropped by the wayside to go down to death in a shroud of snow and a tomb of ice no man may know. The snow will not give up its dead for long months to come.“Are the Christian people of America willing that this thing shall continue?”

CHAPTER XIII.THE REIGN OF TERROR—VAN AND MOUSH.

Much earnest and faithful missionary work had been done in the cities and towns of the various Armenian provinces, before the storm of desolation swept over them. Evangelistic, educational and medical lines had been followed and now the missionaries, who had been laboring in a land where crops had failed and where the inhabitants were leaving their homes to escape starvation, were to face massacre, pillage and horrors, such as the world had not beheld for centuries. No words of praise are adequate to tell the story of the devotion which kept them at their posts, or of the succor they extended to the victims of the Sultan’s hate.A vivid picture of the desolation that everywhere prevailed, was given by one who was engaged in the work of distributing relief money in July, 1895.Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.“Semal and Shenig are situated in a continuous, moderately wide valley, with a little reach of rolling land between the encircling mountains where about half the hill fields are growing green with a sort of millet that matures in a few weeks and which the sufferers were persuaded to come and sow, with oxen loaned by the poor, but generous villagers of the Moush plain. These few fields and few people at work upon them, were all there was to relieve the sad desolation which reigned over all. Buildings, once the homes of happy and prosperous countrymen, now presented only ruinedwalls with not a chip to show they had ever roofs to cover them, save a few, of which a little corner was rudely covered last fall, so that the wretched owners could find imperfect shelter during last winter. The torch of the incendiary soldiers had consumed every vestige of wood from all these scattered homes. The church at the central hamlet, where Der Hohannes (whose eyes were bored out and his throat pierced, while yet alive, by the cruel soldiers), used to officiate, being of stone, was not consumed, being the only roofed building in all the valley, after that flood of carnage had swept past. Near this church we pitched our tent, and began to study the situation.“Beneath our eye, in these two villages, had already gathered over one thousand people, whom it was our work to try and set upon their feet again, so that they could start once more on the uphill road towards prosperity. Could a community be conceived of more completely prostrated? The sheep and cattle, which composed their wealth, in the hands of Kurds, as also their few simple household belongings, cooking vessels, clothing, bedding, etc., and whatever money they may have managed to hoard. Those who fled with their lives found themselves nearly as destitute of all that makes life comfortable as the day they were born.English liberality has already spent five thousand dollars, and the authorities gave reluctant consent to our coming up to distribute it. We located here at Semal, while the Turkish committee has its headquarters at Shenig, half an hour distant. It was evident that the thing to be first accomplished was the erection of houses, and only a few weeks remained in which it would be accomplished, so we set about persuading thepeople to begin preparing their walls for the timbers the government had promised them.“Of the survivors of the massacre (of 1894), five thousand have already gathered to try and reëstablish their old homes, while possibly another eleven hundred may still be scattered over the world. It is impossible as yet to give the exact number of the slaughtered, but it will probably be not far from 4,000. We feel that unless a different status from the present can be secured to distribute anything to these people beyond daily food, is simply to run the risk of its falling into the hands of the Kurds. We have distributed a good many tools, with which the people are gathering hay, in hope of having some animal to eat it during the winter. We should be glad to furnish them with tools for laying up the walls of their houses, and even pay the wages of masons to come and help them. It is all we can do now to prevent the people from fleeing again to the plain, when all their crops would go for naught.”Near Harpoot eleven villages were compelled to accept Mohammedanism, and also near Van the entire population of two villages were forced to change their religion. Eight villages near Van were entirely depopulated. Most of the inhabitants were killed, and those who survived escaped to the snow-covered mountains, where they wandered with their children, naked and starving. The men who were forced to accept Mohammedanism were compelled to take their own sisters-in-law, whose husbands have been killed, to wife—a practice most horrible to the Christians, who hated polygamy. They were also compelled to plunder and kill their Armenian brethren to show that their conversion to Mohammedanism was genuine. The young maidensof these villages were carried into the Pasha’s harem. The Kurds attacked the same villages over and over to make their work of destruction complete, and yet the Sultan ordered his ambassador in Washington to deny that there were any forcible conversions to Islam.All accounts received of the hardships endured by the Armenians were distressing in the extreme. Many of the refugees, weakened by want and exposure, were dying. Fully one thousand Armenian families in the province of Van alone were in want of food. A majority of these families lived on roots and herbs, the few fortunate ones had bread made of clover seed, linseed or flax, mixed with grass and roots. In the district of Moks, three-fourths of the villagers left their homes and were in danger of starving. In Shadakh, two-thirds of the population were homeless wanderers. Beggars swarmed in the streets of Van, but so general was the poverty that little help could be afforded. So widespread was the want that many declared, in bitterness of heart, “there is no food in all the length and breadth of Armenia”—which was long ago the Garden of Eden. Many poor were fed daily at the American mission in Van.America and Armenia both owe more than words can ever express to the energy, devotion and abundant generosity that sent Mr. W. W. Howard, in 1895, to investigate the situation in Armenia. In a later chapter the story of the great relief work will be told, meanwhile Mr. Howard will tell his story. “I have just returned from the interior of the devastated region of Armenia and the English language is impotent to produce a true picture of the actual condition of that distressed country, and a just regard for the conventionalitiesof civilized speech will not permit that the whole truth be told. The refined Christian mind can understand wickedness and iniquity up to a certain point, but beyond that point, it either refuses to believe, or it is incapable of receiving additional impressions.“There are in Armenia at the present moment at least two hundred thousand persons fighting a death fight with famine! In the one province of Van, which is the center of Armenia, there are fully one hundred thousand persons, out of a total Armenian population of one hundred and forty-five thousand, in actual want of food.“Many have already died of starvation, and thousands of villagers are barely keeping soul and body together by eating roots and herbs and sort of bread made of clover seed, flax or linseed meal, mixed with edible grass. I have brought to peaceful, prosperous America specimen loaves of this hunger-bread. Starving villagers, reduced to the verge of despair, are crowding into the cities to beg for food and work. Three thousand unwilling beggars walk the streets of the city of Van, like spectres of famine, asking bread from door to door, who six months ago were comparatively prosperous. Others, too proud to beg, but in as desperate condition, crouch in their ruined homes, waiting for a merciful death to end their sufferings.“These are not hallucinations on my part, but are things which I myself have lately seen with my own eyes. Unless these wretched people receive immediate help, they will perish of starvation. They must have food and clothing or they cannot possibly survive the winter. They are now living on roots and herbs andedible grass, together with this terrible hunger-bread, the mere odor of which is enough to make a strong man shudder; but when winter begins, in October, the supply of edible grass and roots and herbs will be cut off. What will become of them then?“The Armenians have no wheat, and no money with which to buy food. The Kurds and the Turks have taken everything, and the Armenians have nothing.“The Armenians planted only half a crop this year, owing to the persecutions and exactions which beset them on all sides. In the early summer, when the young grain was green, the Kurds pastured their buffalos and their cattle in the growing wheat. Much of the crop was thus destroyed. Later, when that which remained of the wheat was ready for the harvest, the Kurds came down, cut off the heads of the ripened grain, and left the worthless stubble for the Armenians to live upon during the long and bitter winter. Even a persecuted Armenian cannot hope to maintain his family on wheat straw.“Now, we have this condition at the present moment in Armenia: The crop planted this year was entirely inadequate to the needs of the population, and when the Kurds got through pasturing their cattle in the growing fields they harvested the ripened grain for their own use, leaving only dry grass for the Armenians. The systematic persecutions of the people, the exactions of the tax-gatherers, and the repeated robberies by the Kurds have left the Armenians absolutely penniless and foodless. Utterly unable to maintain life in their nearly ruined and wasted villages, the country people are wandering about from place to place, and crowding into the cities. There is no work for them to be had,and no chance of earning enough to keep starvation at bay.“It is for the youngest Christian nation on earth to say whether the oldest shall perish and be no more, and whether the followers of Mohammed shall be the sole inhabitants of that land which, in the beginning of all things, was the Garden of Eden. If we turn a deaf ear now to the supplications of the starving thousands of fellow-Christians in Eastern Turkey, the coming of spring will see the troublous Armenian question forever at rest. There will be no more Armenian question, for there may be no more Armenians.“If, on the contrary, the practical Christians of our own land desire to assist in preserving this ancient Christian race in the land in which it took descent from the grandson of Noah, the way is clear. A little help extended now, will not only save the lives of those who are dropping dead of hunger from day to day, but will provide work during the coming winter.“I have necessarily been brief, and have dwelt entirely upon the starvation in Armenia, because it is the most urgent feature of the situation. I have not touched upon the Sassoun massacre, because as the Grand Vizier of Turkey truthfully says, ‘that is an old story.’ The victims of Sassoun were in many respects more fortunate than their fellows, for they had at least the privilege of dying quickly. They escaped persecution, torture, and starvation. There are very many hopeless creatures in Armenia to-day who would welcome a second Sassoun as an easy release from the burden and shame of living.“As to the cause of the persecution which has broughttwo hundred thousand human beings to the actual brink of starvation, there can be but one explanation. The Armenians are Christians. Should they become Mohammedans their troubles would vanish, and return no more. It is for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that they are persecuted unto death.”A resident of Moush confirmed all that has been stated regarding the widespread suffering and destitution. He said:“After the departure of the Kurdish tribes, which had perpetrated the massacres of Sassoun, the survivors left their hiding-places. One group of these people settled themselves on the plateaux, in the defiles, and in the forests of Sassoun, whilst the greater part emigrated to Moush, whence they were soon scattered among the Armenian villages of the plain. The Armenians sheltered and fed these emigrants as long as they had the means; but being themselves doubly tried by the want which reigns on all sides, and for the past two years and more, in the country, they soon found it impossible for them to supply the needs of these emigrants. The latter were obliged to move away to the mountains, where they are finding their food from herbs and leaves, or else to beg in the villages, where they are hardly finding a morsel of bread.”The Kurds took advantage of the sufferings of the people of Sassoun to carry on a trade in white people. A young Armenian woman of Sassoun, was sold as a slave by these nomads. Another was sold to an inhabitant of the village of Hadji-Osman-Bey, and taken to Diarbekir. A little boy and little girl were bought for one hundred and thirty piastres of a Kurd named Mehmed; this amount included besides, the price of adonkey. There were other instances also of the same character.The following letter from the Duke of Westminster to the editor of an American paper, afforded new evidence of the widespread destitution in Armenia:“Sir:—There is an additional distressing phase connected with the sufferings of the Armenians consequent on the losses they have sustained at the hands of the Turks, which calls for consideration and assistance from those who are ever ready to relieve distress in whatever part of the world. Vice-Consul Shipley reports from Moush, that ‘there is great distress, amounting in a great number of cases to abject destitution, among the fugitives from Sassoun, of which he and his colleagues have had many opportunities of convincing themselves from personal observation.’ Mr. Hallward, Her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Van, testifies that the need for relief is unquestioned; that there is an enormous amount of destitution, and that there will certainly be more before next winter.“This applies, we are assured, to the province of Bitlis, and to a large extent to Erzeroum, where there are survivors of the Sassoun massacre—mostly women and children who have no one to provide for them—scattered about. A year ago these people were comparatively prosperous and comfortable, but are now barefoot and in rags, begging their daily bread from those who are not much better off than themselves.“Consul Graves forwards a private letter describing the deplorable condition of the people at Talvorig:—‘There are about eight hundred and fifty of these houseless wanderers now living in the woods and mountains, in caves and hollow trees, half naked, and some, indeed,entirely without covering for their nakedness. Bread they have not tasted for months, and curdled milk they only dream of, living, as they do, upon greens and the leaves of trees. There are two varieties of greens which are preferred, but these are disappearing, as they wither at this season. Living on such food, they become sickly; their skin has turned yellow, their strength is gone, their bodies are swollen, and fever is rife among them.’“In addition to these, there are thousands of refugees who, compelled by poverty and danger to abandon their village homes, have flocked into the towns where they hope to find personal safety and charity to keep them alive.“The Committee of the Armenian Relief Fund has already remitted £3,000 to Sir Philip Currie, Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople, for the distribution of food and clothing in the distressed districts, and further aid is very urgently required.“Westminster.”Grosvenor House, London, W., Sept. 20th, 1895.Probably the best known and most experienced of all the Americans who have served in the missionary field in Asia Minor is Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. the venerable founder of Roberts College, Constantinople. Dr. Hamlin, has a lifelong acquaintance with the Armenian question in its various phases, and is a strong champion of the right of this oldest Christian nation on earth to be permitted to live and worship in the faith of their fathers. Conversing on the subject, Dr. Hamlin said:“The condition of affairs in that country has not been exaggerated in the printed reports. I have latelyfinished reading the MS. of some two hundred letters from missionaries, a very large part of them dealing with the oppressions and sufferings of the Armenians, which were of a most frightful character. The poor creatures must have help before the winter opens in earnest, or they will perish. An Armenian winter is usually very severe, the snow lying on the ground from four to six feet in depth and the cold being intense.“The whole civilized Christian world must help these people—they must be saved from death and assisted over the winter. They can look in no other direction for help, for there is no sympathy and assistance to be had from Turkey. Indeed, the policy of the Sultan’s government is apparently dictated by a desire to efface the Armenian people altogether—at least those of them who will not accept Mohammed. When you talk sympathizingly about these people, a Turk will say in surprise: ‘Why do you speak in behalf of such worthless trash and try to save them? They can save themselves—all they need do is to accept Islam and then they are safe and out of trouble.’“And so,” continued Dr. Hamlin, “A Turk regards it as strange that an Armenian should refuse to purchase his life at the cost of his faith; but there are some among them who take a different view. Some of the Turkish soldiers who shared in the terrible atrocities lately perpetrated on the Armenian Christians have been stricken by remorse afterward. One soldier, who had borne his part in several horrible butcheries of women and children, was so troubled that he could not sleep. He had visions of his victims that ultimately drove him insane.”Dr. Hamlin spoke in the highest terms of Miss Kimball and her relief work, in conjunction with the other missionaries at Van. “No one knew the needs of the suffering people better, or was better qualified to deal with the present very trying situation. It is the duty of the Christians of America to help them as far as we can help them. The Turks will embarrass the work if they can; they wish these people to die. In the whole region of Sassoun—comprised of about one hundred villages—forty or fifty villages have been annihilated.” A letter from Mr. Cole, a missionary who is employed in relief work, stated that he visited a village of one hundred and seventy-five houses, every one of which had been destroyed. The Turks would not even permit him to erect a shanty as a defence against the weather, lest some Armenian should get the use of it. They wished these people to die out of cold or starvation.England, whose official support of Turkey made it in large measure responsible for the wrongs and sufferings of the Armenians, now moved for reform in that unfortunate country. At the same time, the English people were helping the Armenians by contributions. On the occasion of opening a bazaar held at Chester, for the benefit of the Armenian sufferers, Mrs. Gladstone gave expression to the popular sentiment prevailing in England regarding Armenia’s condition in these terms: “No words of mine are needed to describe the frightful need of help. You are all aware of the terrible details. I plead to-day in behalf of the poor sufferers—that we may be instrumental in allaying their sufferings. As my husband says, we cannot dictate to the government as to the time, but we pray that the Powers may soon take action to end Armenia’s woes.”But while this most blessed work of caring for these hunger-stricken, homeless and wretched Armenians was going on, the storm burst upon them in all its fury. The appetite of the Moslem had merely been whetted, not satiated.Following the massacres in Trebizond and Erzeroum all the villages about them were almost depopulated, the orders for the slaughter of the Christians, as the Moslem troops admit, having come from Constantinople. At Sivas the massacre was terrible, and a like horror occurred at Marash. The ungovernable fury of the Turks spared neither age or sex, and the brutalities practiced upon women and children could not be described. Bodies of little children, dead and mutilated, were found in the fields after the slaughter had ended. Large numbers of the victims of these atrocities died the death of martyrs. They fell in the Moslem war for the extermination of the religion of Jesus in Asia Minor.At Diarbekir, where the victims were numbered by thousands, there was abundant evidence that the massacre was premeditated. It was claimed that the Armenians had attacked a Moslem mosque, whereas the facts, as afterwards disclosed, showed the Kurds and Turks to have been the sole and intentional aggressors. The massacre began on Friday, and continued on Saturday and Sunday with insatiable ferocity.Meanwhile, the story of what was taking place in the villages and hamlets of the different districts had not reached the public ear. When it came, it disclosed a tale of suffering and savagism that had scarcely a parallel. Many hundreds of villages were literally swept out of existence. The story of one is the story of all: the Kurds, directed from higher sources, swoopingdown, rounding up the cattle, slaying the strong men, outraging and abducting the women, and killing even the children, concluded the satanic work by burning everything that would consume. In many places the Kurdish troops came equipped with empty sacks strapped to their saddles for the purpose of carrying off the plunder. The Kurdish chiefs openly declared that they were ordered to slay the Christians and take the plunder for their pay.Rev. John Wright, another missionary, wrote: “In one instance, the Kurds, after compelling a family to provide food for their horses and themselves, smothered a babe which was asleep in the cradle, cut it in pieces and roasted it before the fire on their weapons, and then made the mother eat the flesh. In another case, when the Kurds had killed an Armenian, they joined hands and danced about the corpse, singing a song of triumph. They then cut up the corpse, boiled it, and forced the Armenians residing there to eat the flesh. Flocks were driven off, grain burned, and houses razed to the ground and burned. Many women died from fright, and the children also died from fright or exposure to the cold. We found that nearly half the members of the families we met had perished during the flight. They had great difficulty in securing food to eat. All of them had substantially the same harrowing tale to tell. About ten thousand refugees are estimated to have passed through the district of Khoi.”Eight of the villages near Van were totally depopulated and all their people slain or rendered fugitives, except the young women who were seized and taken to Kurdish harems. In the Van provinces nearly two hundred villages were partially destroyed.During the last weeks in December, 1895, the carnival of slaughter continued with tireless energy and terrible ferocity by the Turks and Kurds. From every side came reports of atrocities by Turks, Kurds, and Circassians—villages swept by fire, the men massacred, the women either slain or reserved for a fate worse than death. Thousands of women were carried away captive to become inmates of some vile Moslem harem. An illustration of the Turkish method of extermination was found in the case of the village of Hoh, in the Sandjak district. At first the aghas (or local magistrates) promised to protect the Christians, but when they saw villages burning in every direction they refused to keep their word. All the Christians were told that, under the pain of death, they must accept Islam. They were assembled at the Mosque, and there eighty young men were picked out and led outside the village—for slaughter. Eight escaped, sixty-two were killed, and ten wounded. The young women of the village were taken to Turkish harems, and the survivors of the Christian population were scattered among other villages.In every district there was the same tragic story of massacre, outrage, pillage, and abduction; monasteries sacked, and Christian pastors and people butchered. In many villages the Armenian priests were among the number who laid down their lives as a testimony to the faith. In almost every village the strong men and youths were killed, and in nearly every case they met death with the fortitude of true martyrs. Many were killed with horrible tortures, because of their refusal to deny Christ. Among those who so perished were the Armenian pastors at Khizan, Halakeny, and Koh.Although in official communications the atrocities were denied by the Turkish government, the statements issued by the Porte were nowhere credited. Denials of the massacres of Trebizond and Erzeroum were circulated, despite the statements of American and European Consular officials, missionaries, and Armenian survivors, supplemented by the photographs of the piles of dead in the streets and cemeteries. A number of Armenian citizens were arrested by the authorities after the Trebizond massacre, on the pretext that they caused the riot, and six of them were condemned to death.In January, 1896, the Mesopotamian Christians of Mardin were suddenly attacked by a large body of Kurds, the town being surrounded. News had already been received of the burning of many villages and the massacre of thousands of peaceful peasants, but the Mardin attack came like a thunderbolt. Many hundreds were butchered in a few hours. A number of native ministers of the Gospel were slain.The town was a scene of terror and desolation; groups of weeping mothers and crying children sheltered themselves in the houses, while all around, and even upon the floors were the telltale pools of blood that showed where the martyrs fell under the Kurdish swords. Dead bodies, clotted with blood that had flowed from great gaping wounds, lay everywhere in sight. There were other horrors that added to the terror—the attacks on the native women and girls, who were subjected to nameless abuse.The massacres at Mardin and Gemerek resulted in leaving the survivors in those once populous villages in a condition that threatened to exterminate them bystarvation. The help which was cabled to them from the relief fund was welcomed with a gratitude that can hardly be expressed in words. With the horror of their recent woes still unrelieved, the aid seemed as if heaven-sent. Erzeroum was still full of wounded, and rows upon rows of blackened ruins alone showed where its homes once stood. There were many hundreds homeless. Harpoot, too, had a large number exposed to hunger and cold. At Diarbekir the destitution was probably worst of all, for both in the city and villages, the slaughter was relentless, and the survivors had nothing to expect but death by slow degrees—their little ones perishing of hunger and cold beside them. At Erzinjian, where many martyrs fell, the remaining Christians were scattered around, hiding where they could, like hunted wild beasts.After these massacres most piteous appeals were received in this country from relatives in the stricken towns and villages. A letter sent by a poor mother from Gurun to a relative here, said:“We have only to say that I and my child are living. No male population has been left in our town. They have killed my father. I took the child with me and sought refuge in the church. Our cousin also has been killed. Of our three families, only one family has partly a shelter, but we have not even a piece of a blanket to cover our nakedness! We have nothing to eat. The government is giving a small piece of bread for each living person. No physician has been left. Our child has not a book to study from or to read. Everything has been destroyed. They have plundered even the goods which were concealed in the ground. There is no life for us here. In our three families,there is not a lamp to give light. For God’s sake send help or else we will die of starvation.”Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.A letter from a young man in the same town to an Armenian in New York, said:“You have no doubt heard of the terrible events that have taken place in our town. They have not left anything in our house. They killed your brother and sister. They have burned our stable and woodhouse and our winter house. We are in terrible distress. We have no bedding, no clothes. We have not even the means to procure a piece of dry bread. Rich and poor are all alike, and our generous neighbors are not any better off than ourselves, so that they cannot help us. No merchant or broker has been left.”A few extracts from another report of Mr. W. W. Howard, sent from Urumia in December, 1895, will fitly close this chapter of woe and destitution.“The American mission work at Van has been suspended, and all the schools closed. The closing of the schools, however, has not been confined to the American mission, but has extended to every school in the city, of whatever race or creed. All the shops have likewise been closed, both Armenian and Turkish. Even the Turkish shops in the bazaar proper have been shut, so great is the fear of massacre. The Turkish Government ordered the Armenian merchants to open their shops, and the Armenians obeyed, but when the shops were opened they were entirely empty, the goods having been removed to the merchants’ houses. The merchants then sat in their empty stores with nothing to sell.“With the money already sent to her, Miss Kimball has done a large work in the supplying of bread for thestarving, and she is now at work on a soup kitchen. Her plan of relief is to furnish work to such of the poor as are able to work. Business in Van and the province of Van has been dead for months. Nothing is being bought or sold except the simplest articles of food that will sustain life. Miss Kimball is, therefore, distributing these articles of clothing free to the wretched village refugees who are flocking to Van in rags and nakedness.“In raiding the villages the Hamidieh cavalry not only destroyed the houses, drove off the sheep and cattle and removed every portable piece of property, but actually stripped the villagers of the clothes on their backs. The unfortunate peasants, men, women and children, were thrust out into the wilderness of snow-covered mountains without clothes to cover them or food to eat. How many of these poor creatures left bloody tracks on snow and ice; how many dropped by the wayside to go down to death in a shroud of snow and a tomb of ice no man may know. The snow will not give up its dead for long months to come.“Are the Christian people of America willing that this thing shall continue?”

Much earnest and faithful missionary work had been done in the cities and towns of the various Armenian provinces, before the storm of desolation swept over them. Evangelistic, educational and medical lines had been followed and now the missionaries, who had been laboring in a land where crops had failed and where the inhabitants were leaving their homes to escape starvation, were to face massacre, pillage and horrors, such as the world had not beheld for centuries. No words of praise are adequate to tell the story of the devotion which kept them at their posts, or of the succor they extended to the victims of the Sultan’s hate.

A vivid picture of the desolation that everywhere prevailed, was given by one who was engaged in the work of distributing relief money in July, 1895.

Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.

Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.

“Semal and Shenig are situated in a continuous, moderately wide valley, with a little reach of rolling land between the encircling mountains where about half the hill fields are growing green with a sort of millet that matures in a few weeks and which the sufferers were persuaded to come and sow, with oxen loaned by the poor, but generous villagers of the Moush plain. These few fields and few people at work upon them, were all there was to relieve the sad desolation which reigned over all. Buildings, once the homes of happy and prosperous countrymen, now presented only ruinedwalls with not a chip to show they had ever roofs to cover them, save a few, of which a little corner was rudely covered last fall, so that the wretched owners could find imperfect shelter during last winter. The torch of the incendiary soldiers had consumed every vestige of wood from all these scattered homes. The church at the central hamlet, where Der Hohannes (whose eyes were bored out and his throat pierced, while yet alive, by the cruel soldiers), used to officiate, being of stone, was not consumed, being the only roofed building in all the valley, after that flood of carnage had swept past. Near this church we pitched our tent, and began to study the situation.

“Beneath our eye, in these two villages, had already gathered over one thousand people, whom it was our work to try and set upon their feet again, so that they could start once more on the uphill road towards prosperity. Could a community be conceived of more completely prostrated? The sheep and cattle, which composed their wealth, in the hands of Kurds, as also their few simple household belongings, cooking vessels, clothing, bedding, etc., and whatever money they may have managed to hoard. Those who fled with their lives found themselves nearly as destitute of all that makes life comfortable as the day they were born.

English liberality has already spent five thousand dollars, and the authorities gave reluctant consent to our coming up to distribute it. We located here at Semal, while the Turkish committee has its headquarters at Shenig, half an hour distant. It was evident that the thing to be first accomplished was the erection of houses, and only a few weeks remained in which it would be accomplished, so we set about persuading thepeople to begin preparing their walls for the timbers the government had promised them.

“Of the survivors of the massacre (of 1894), five thousand have already gathered to try and reëstablish their old homes, while possibly another eleven hundred may still be scattered over the world. It is impossible as yet to give the exact number of the slaughtered, but it will probably be not far from 4,000. We feel that unless a different status from the present can be secured to distribute anything to these people beyond daily food, is simply to run the risk of its falling into the hands of the Kurds. We have distributed a good many tools, with which the people are gathering hay, in hope of having some animal to eat it during the winter. We should be glad to furnish them with tools for laying up the walls of their houses, and even pay the wages of masons to come and help them. It is all we can do now to prevent the people from fleeing again to the plain, when all their crops would go for naught.”

Near Harpoot eleven villages were compelled to accept Mohammedanism, and also near Van the entire population of two villages were forced to change their religion. Eight villages near Van were entirely depopulated. Most of the inhabitants were killed, and those who survived escaped to the snow-covered mountains, where they wandered with their children, naked and starving. The men who were forced to accept Mohammedanism were compelled to take their own sisters-in-law, whose husbands have been killed, to wife—a practice most horrible to the Christians, who hated polygamy. They were also compelled to plunder and kill their Armenian brethren to show that their conversion to Mohammedanism was genuine. The young maidensof these villages were carried into the Pasha’s harem. The Kurds attacked the same villages over and over to make their work of destruction complete, and yet the Sultan ordered his ambassador in Washington to deny that there were any forcible conversions to Islam.

All accounts received of the hardships endured by the Armenians were distressing in the extreme. Many of the refugees, weakened by want and exposure, were dying. Fully one thousand Armenian families in the province of Van alone were in want of food. A majority of these families lived on roots and herbs, the few fortunate ones had bread made of clover seed, linseed or flax, mixed with grass and roots. In the district of Moks, three-fourths of the villagers left their homes and were in danger of starving. In Shadakh, two-thirds of the population were homeless wanderers. Beggars swarmed in the streets of Van, but so general was the poverty that little help could be afforded. So widespread was the want that many declared, in bitterness of heart, “there is no food in all the length and breadth of Armenia”—which was long ago the Garden of Eden. Many poor were fed daily at the American mission in Van.

America and Armenia both owe more than words can ever express to the energy, devotion and abundant generosity that sent Mr. W. W. Howard, in 1895, to investigate the situation in Armenia. In a later chapter the story of the great relief work will be told, meanwhile Mr. Howard will tell his story. “I have just returned from the interior of the devastated region of Armenia and the English language is impotent to produce a true picture of the actual condition of that distressed country, and a just regard for the conventionalitiesof civilized speech will not permit that the whole truth be told. The refined Christian mind can understand wickedness and iniquity up to a certain point, but beyond that point, it either refuses to believe, or it is incapable of receiving additional impressions.

“There are in Armenia at the present moment at least two hundred thousand persons fighting a death fight with famine! In the one province of Van, which is the center of Armenia, there are fully one hundred thousand persons, out of a total Armenian population of one hundred and forty-five thousand, in actual want of food.

“Many have already died of starvation, and thousands of villagers are barely keeping soul and body together by eating roots and herbs and sort of bread made of clover seed, flax or linseed meal, mixed with edible grass. I have brought to peaceful, prosperous America specimen loaves of this hunger-bread. Starving villagers, reduced to the verge of despair, are crowding into the cities to beg for food and work. Three thousand unwilling beggars walk the streets of the city of Van, like spectres of famine, asking bread from door to door, who six months ago were comparatively prosperous. Others, too proud to beg, but in as desperate condition, crouch in their ruined homes, waiting for a merciful death to end their sufferings.

“These are not hallucinations on my part, but are things which I myself have lately seen with my own eyes. Unless these wretched people receive immediate help, they will perish of starvation. They must have food and clothing or they cannot possibly survive the winter. They are now living on roots and herbs andedible grass, together with this terrible hunger-bread, the mere odor of which is enough to make a strong man shudder; but when winter begins, in October, the supply of edible grass and roots and herbs will be cut off. What will become of them then?

“The Armenians have no wheat, and no money with which to buy food. The Kurds and the Turks have taken everything, and the Armenians have nothing.

“The Armenians planted only half a crop this year, owing to the persecutions and exactions which beset them on all sides. In the early summer, when the young grain was green, the Kurds pastured their buffalos and their cattle in the growing wheat. Much of the crop was thus destroyed. Later, when that which remained of the wheat was ready for the harvest, the Kurds came down, cut off the heads of the ripened grain, and left the worthless stubble for the Armenians to live upon during the long and bitter winter. Even a persecuted Armenian cannot hope to maintain his family on wheat straw.

“Now, we have this condition at the present moment in Armenia: The crop planted this year was entirely inadequate to the needs of the population, and when the Kurds got through pasturing their cattle in the growing fields they harvested the ripened grain for their own use, leaving only dry grass for the Armenians. The systematic persecutions of the people, the exactions of the tax-gatherers, and the repeated robberies by the Kurds have left the Armenians absolutely penniless and foodless. Utterly unable to maintain life in their nearly ruined and wasted villages, the country people are wandering about from place to place, and crowding into the cities. There is no work for them to be had,and no chance of earning enough to keep starvation at bay.

“It is for the youngest Christian nation on earth to say whether the oldest shall perish and be no more, and whether the followers of Mohammed shall be the sole inhabitants of that land which, in the beginning of all things, was the Garden of Eden. If we turn a deaf ear now to the supplications of the starving thousands of fellow-Christians in Eastern Turkey, the coming of spring will see the troublous Armenian question forever at rest. There will be no more Armenian question, for there may be no more Armenians.

“If, on the contrary, the practical Christians of our own land desire to assist in preserving this ancient Christian race in the land in which it took descent from the grandson of Noah, the way is clear. A little help extended now, will not only save the lives of those who are dropping dead of hunger from day to day, but will provide work during the coming winter.

“I have necessarily been brief, and have dwelt entirely upon the starvation in Armenia, because it is the most urgent feature of the situation. I have not touched upon the Sassoun massacre, because as the Grand Vizier of Turkey truthfully says, ‘that is an old story.’ The victims of Sassoun were in many respects more fortunate than their fellows, for they had at least the privilege of dying quickly. They escaped persecution, torture, and starvation. There are very many hopeless creatures in Armenia to-day who would welcome a second Sassoun as an easy release from the burden and shame of living.

“As to the cause of the persecution which has broughttwo hundred thousand human beings to the actual brink of starvation, there can be but one explanation. The Armenians are Christians. Should they become Mohammedans their troubles would vanish, and return no more. It is for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that they are persecuted unto death.”

A resident of Moush confirmed all that has been stated regarding the widespread suffering and destitution. He said:

“After the departure of the Kurdish tribes, which had perpetrated the massacres of Sassoun, the survivors left their hiding-places. One group of these people settled themselves on the plateaux, in the defiles, and in the forests of Sassoun, whilst the greater part emigrated to Moush, whence they were soon scattered among the Armenian villages of the plain. The Armenians sheltered and fed these emigrants as long as they had the means; but being themselves doubly tried by the want which reigns on all sides, and for the past two years and more, in the country, they soon found it impossible for them to supply the needs of these emigrants. The latter were obliged to move away to the mountains, where they are finding their food from herbs and leaves, or else to beg in the villages, where they are hardly finding a morsel of bread.”

The Kurds took advantage of the sufferings of the people of Sassoun to carry on a trade in white people. A young Armenian woman of Sassoun, was sold as a slave by these nomads. Another was sold to an inhabitant of the village of Hadji-Osman-Bey, and taken to Diarbekir. A little boy and little girl were bought for one hundred and thirty piastres of a Kurd named Mehmed; this amount included besides, the price of adonkey. There were other instances also of the same character.

The following letter from the Duke of Westminster to the editor of an American paper, afforded new evidence of the widespread destitution in Armenia:

“Sir:—There is an additional distressing phase connected with the sufferings of the Armenians consequent on the losses they have sustained at the hands of the Turks, which calls for consideration and assistance from those who are ever ready to relieve distress in whatever part of the world. Vice-Consul Shipley reports from Moush, that ‘there is great distress, amounting in a great number of cases to abject destitution, among the fugitives from Sassoun, of which he and his colleagues have had many opportunities of convincing themselves from personal observation.’ Mr. Hallward, Her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Van, testifies that the need for relief is unquestioned; that there is an enormous amount of destitution, and that there will certainly be more before next winter.

“This applies, we are assured, to the province of Bitlis, and to a large extent to Erzeroum, where there are survivors of the Sassoun massacre—mostly women and children who have no one to provide for them—scattered about. A year ago these people were comparatively prosperous and comfortable, but are now barefoot and in rags, begging their daily bread from those who are not much better off than themselves.

“Consul Graves forwards a private letter describing the deplorable condition of the people at Talvorig:—‘There are about eight hundred and fifty of these houseless wanderers now living in the woods and mountains, in caves and hollow trees, half naked, and some, indeed,entirely without covering for their nakedness. Bread they have not tasted for months, and curdled milk they only dream of, living, as they do, upon greens and the leaves of trees. There are two varieties of greens which are preferred, but these are disappearing, as they wither at this season. Living on such food, they become sickly; their skin has turned yellow, their strength is gone, their bodies are swollen, and fever is rife among them.’

“In addition to these, there are thousands of refugees who, compelled by poverty and danger to abandon their village homes, have flocked into the towns where they hope to find personal safety and charity to keep them alive.

“The Committee of the Armenian Relief Fund has already remitted £3,000 to Sir Philip Currie, Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople, for the distribution of food and clothing in the distressed districts, and further aid is very urgently required.

“Westminster.”Grosvenor House, London, W., Sept. 20th, 1895.

Probably the best known and most experienced of all the Americans who have served in the missionary field in Asia Minor is Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. the venerable founder of Roberts College, Constantinople. Dr. Hamlin, has a lifelong acquaintance with the Armenian question in its various phases, and is a strong champion of the right of this oldest Christian nation on earth to be permitted to live and worship in the faith of their fathers. Conversing on the subject, Dr. Hamlin said:

“The condition of affairs in that country has not been exaggerated in the printed reports. I have latelyfinished reading the MS. of some two hundred letters from missionaries, a very large part of them dealing with the oppressions and sufferings of the Armenians, which were of a most frightful character. The poor creatures must have help before the winter opens in earnest, or they will perish. An Armenian winter is usually very severe, the snow lying on the ground from four to six feet in depth and the cold being intense.

“The whole civilized Christian world must help these people—they must be saved from death and assisted over the winter. They can look in no other direction for help, for there is no sympathy and assistance to be had from Turkey. Indeed, the policy of the Sultan’s government is apparently dictated by a desire to efface the Armenian people altogether—at least those of them who will not accept Mohammed. When you talk sympathizingly about these people, a Turk will say in surprise: ‘Why do you speak in behalf of such worthless trash and try to save them? They can save themselves—all they need do is to accept Islam and then they are safe and out of trouble.’

“And so,” continued Dr. Hamlin, “A Turk regards it as strange that an Armenian should refuse to purchase his life at the cost of his faith; but there are some among them who take a different view. Some of the Turkish soldiers who shared in the terrible atrocities lately perpetrated on the Armenian Christians have been stricken by remorse afterward. One soldier, who had borne his part in several horrible butcheries of women and children, was so troubled that he could not sleep. He had visions of his victims that ultimately drove him insane.”

Dr. Hamlin spoke in the highest terms of Miss Kimball and her relief work, in conjunction with the other missionaries at Van. “No one knew the needs of the suffering people better, or was better qualified to deal with the present very trying situation. It is the duty of the Christians of America to help them as far as we can help them. The Turks will embarrass the work if they can; they wish these people to die. In the whole region of Sassoun—comprised of about one hundred villages—forty or fifty villages have been annihilated.” A letter from Mr. Cole, a missionary who is employed in relief work, stated that he visited a village of one hundred and seventy-five houses, every one of which had been destroyed. The Turks would not even permit him to erect a shanty as a defence against the weather, lest some Armenian should get the use of it. They wished these people to die out of cold or starvation.

England, whose official support of Turkey made it in large measure responsible for the wrongs and sufferings of the Armenians, now moved for reform in that unfortunate country. At the same time, the English people were helping the Armenians by contributions. On the occasion of opening a bazaar held at Chester, for the benefit of the Armenian sufferers, Mrs. Gladstone gave expression to the popular sentiment prevailing in England regarding Armenia’s condition in these terms: “No words of mine are needed to describe the frightful need of help. You are all aware of the terrible details. I plead to-day in behalf of the poor sufferers—that we may be instrumental in allaying their sufferings. As my husband says, we cannot dictate to the government as to the time, but we pray that the Powers may soon take action to end Armenia’s woes.”

But while this most blessed work of caring for these hunger-stricken, homeless and wretched Armenians was going on, the storm burst upon them in all its fury. The appetite of the Moslem had merely been whetted, not satiated.

Following the massacres in Trebizond and Erzeroum all the villages about them were almost depopulated, the orders for the slaughter of the Christians, as the Moslem troops admit, having come from Constantinople. At Sivas the massacre was terrible, and a like horror occurred at Marash. The ungovernable fury of the Turks spared neither age or sex, and the brutalities practiced upon women and children could not be described. Bodies of little children, dead and mutilated, were found in the fields after the slaughter had ended. Large numbers of the victims of these atrocities died the death of martyrs. They fell in the Moslem war for the extermination of the religion of Jesus in Asia Minor.

At Diarbekir, where the victims were numbered by thousands, there was abundant evidence that the massacre was premeditated. It was claimed that the Armenians had attacked a Moslem mosque, whereas the facts, as afterwards disclosed, showed the Kurds and Turks to have been the sole and intentional aggressors. The massacre began on Friday, and continued on Saturday and Sunday with insatiable ferocity.

Meanwhile, the story of what was taking place in the villages and hamlets of the different districts had not reached the public ear. When it came, it disclosed a tale of suffering and savagism that had scarcely a parallel. Many hundreds of villages were literally swept out of existence. The story of one is the story of all: the Kurds, directed from higher sources, swoopingdown, rounding up the cattle, slaying the strong men, outraging and abducting the women, and killing even the children, concluded the satanic work by burning everything that would consume. In many places the Kurdish troops came equipped with empty sacks strapped to their saddles for the purpose of carrying off the plunder. The Kurdish chiefs openly declared that they were ordered to slay the Christians and take the plunder for their pay.

Rev. John Wright, another missionary, wrote: “In one instance, the Kurds, after compelling a family to provide food for their horses and themselves, smothered a babe which was asleep in the cradle, cut it in pieces and roasted it before the fire on their weapons, and then made the mother eat the flesh. In another case, when the Kurds had killed an Armenian, they joined hands and danced about the corpse, singing a song of triumph. They then cut up the corpse, boiled it, and forced the Armenians residing there to eat the flesh. Flocks were driven off, grain burned, and houses razed to the ground and burned. Many women died from fright, and the children also died from fright or exposure to the cold. We found that nearly half the members of the families we met had perished during the flight. They had great difficulty in securing food to eat. All of them had substantially the same harrowing tale to tell. About ten thousand refugees are estimated to have passed through the district of Khoi.”

Eight of the villages near Van were totally depopulated and all their people slain or rendered fugitives, except the young women who were seized and taken to Kurdish harems. In the Van provinces nearly two hundred villages were partially destroyed.

During the last weeks in December, 1895, the carnival of slaughter continued with tireless energy and terrible ferocity by the Turks and Kurds. From every side came reports of atrocities by Turks, Kurds, and Circassians—villages swept by fire, the men massacred, the women either slain or reserved for a fate worse than death. Thousands of women were carried away captive to become inmates of some vile Moslem harem. An illustration of the Turkish method of extermination was found in the case of the village of Hoh, in the Sandjak district. At first the aghas (or local magistrates) promised to protect the Christians, but when they saw villages burning in every direction they refused to keep their word. All the Christians were told that, under the pain of death, they must accept Islam. They were assembled at the Mosque, and there eighty young men were picked out and led outside the village—for slaughter. Eight escaped, sixty-two were killed, and ten wounded. The young women of the village were taken to Turkish harems, and the survivors of the Christian population were scattered among other villages.

In every district there was the same tragic story of massacre, outrage, pillage, and abduction; monasteries sacked, and Christian pastors and people butchered. In many villages the Armenian priests were among the number who laid down their lives as a testimony to the faith. In almost every village the strong men and youths were killed, and in nearly every case they met death with the fortitude of true martyrs. Many were killed with horrible tortures, because of their refusal to deny Christ. Among those who so perished were the Armenian pastors at Khizan, Halakeny, and Koh.

Although in official communications the atrocities were denied by the Turkish government, the statements issued by the Porte were nowhere credited. Denials of the massacres of Trebizond and Erzeroum were circulated, despite the statements of American and European Consular officials, missionaries, and Armenian survivors, supplemented by the photographs of the piles of dead in the streets and cemeteries. A number of Armenian citizens were arrested by the authorities after the Trebizond massacre, on the pretext that they caused the riot, and six of them were condemned to death.

In January, 1896, the Mesopotamian Christians of Mardin were suddenly attacked by a large body of Kurds, the town being surrounded. News had already been received of the burning of many villages and the massacre of thousands of peaceful peasants, but the Mardin attack came like a thunderbolt. Many hundreds were butchered in a few hours. A number of native ministers of the Gospel were slain.

The town was a scene of terror and desolation; groups of weeping mothers and crying children sheltered themselves in the houses, while all around, and even upon the floors were the telltale pools of blood that showed where the martyrs fell under the Kurdish swords. Dead bodies, clotted with blood that had flowed from great gaping wounds, lay everywhere in sight. There were other horrors that added to the terror—the attacks on the native women and girls, who were subjected to nameless abuse.

The massacres at Mardin and Gemerek resulted in leaving the survivors in those once populous villages in a condition that threatened to exterminate them bystarvation. The help which was cabled to them from the relief fund was welcomed with a gratitude that can hardly be expressed in words. With the horror of their recent woes still unrelieved, the aid seemed as if heaven-sent. Erzeroum was still full of wounded, and rows upon rows of blackened ruins alone showed where its homes once stood. There were many hundreds homeless. Harpoot, too, had a large number exposed to hunger and cold. At Diarbekir the destitution was probably worst of all, for both in the city and villages, the slaughter was relentless, and the survivors had nothing to expect but death by slow degrees—their little ones perishing of hunger and cold beside them. At Erzinjian, where many martyrs fell, the remaining Christians were scattered around, hiding where they could, like hunted wild beasts.

After these massacres most piteous appeals were received in this country from relatives in the stricken towns and villages. A letter sent by a poor mother from Gurun to a relative here, said:

“We have only to say that I and my child are living. No male population has been left in our town. They have killed my father. I took the child with me and sought refuge in the church. Our cousin also has been killed. Of our three families, only one family has partly a shelter, but we have not even a piece of a blanket to cover our nakedness! We have nothing to eat. The government is giving a small piece of bread for each living person. No physician has been left. Our child has not a book to study from or to read. Everything has been destroyed. They have plundered even the goods which were concealed in the ground. There is no life for us here. In our three families,there is not a lamp to give light. For God’s sake send help or else we will die of starvation.”

Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.

Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.

A letter from a young man in the same town to an Armenian in New York, said:

“You have no doubt heard of the terrible events that have taken place in our town. They have not left anything in our house. They killed your brother and sister. They have burned our stable and woodhouse and our winter house. We are in terrible distress. We have no bedding, no clothes. We have not even the means to procure a piece of dry bread. Rich and poor are all alike, and our generous neighbors are not any better off than ourselves, so that they cannot help us. No merchant or broker has been left.”

A few extracts from another report of Mr. W. W. Howard, sent from Urumia in December, 1895, will fitly close this chapter of woe and destitution.

“The American mission work at Van has been suspended, and all the schools closed. The closing of the schools, however, has not been confined to the American mission, but has extended to every school in the city, of whatever race or creed. All the shops have likewise been closed, both Armenian and Turkish. Even the Turkish shops in the bazaar proper have been shut, so great is the fear of massacre. The Turkish Government ordered the Armenian merchants to open their shops, and the Armenians obeyed, but when the shops were opened they were entirely empty, the goods having been removed to the merchants’ houses. The merchants then sat in their empty stores with nothing to sell.

“With the money already sent to her, Miss Kimball has done a large work in the supplying of bread for thestarving, and she is now at work on a soup kitchen. Her plan of relief is to furnish work to such of the poor as are able to work. Business in Van and the province of Van has been dead for months. Nothing is being bought or sold except the simplest articles of food that will sustain life. Miss Kimball is, therefore, distributing these articles of clothing free to the wretched village refugees who are flocking to Van in rags and nakedness.

“In raiding the villages the Hamidieh cavalry not only destroyed the houses, drove off the sheep and cattle and removed every portable piece of property, but actually stripped the villagers of the clothes on their backs. The unfortunate peasants, men, women and children, were thrust out into the wilderness of snow-covered mountains without clothes to cover them or food to eat. How many of these poor creatures left bloody tracks on snow and ice; how many dropped by the wayside to go down to death in a shroud of snow and a tomb of ice no man may know. The snow will not give up its dead for long months to come.

“Are the Christian people of America willing that this thing shall continue?”

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