Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.—Page 379. A group of views showing the interior of a Kurdish tent, in which three chiefs are partaking of coffee; a soldier, in picturesque dress, standing on guard, or, to salute his superior officer; a valley of surpassing beauty, with snow-capped mountains in the distance; a Kurdish encampment, with houses in the background, and a view of Sinna, the capital of Persian-Kurdestan.
Refugees and Cavasses at an Armenian Church.—Page 398. After the first riots in Constantinople, the various Armenian churches were filled with refugees who could hardly be persuaded to leave their sanctuary. After repeated assurances of protection by the dragomans of the six European embassies, the refugees returned to their homes. As they left each church, they were drawn up in line and searched for arms.
A Prayer for Revenge.—Page 415. The heart-rending agonies of the martyr have died out, and his soul has gone up in anguish before the throne. The aged father and brother have been favored in being able to secure the body for burial. But how can they pray? The Turkish soldiers cried out as they tortured the dying man, “Where is your God, now? Why doesn’t he deliver you?” and filled his ears with awful blasphemies in his last moments.
Massacre of Armenians at Erzeroum.—Page 434. The massacre at Erzeroum began October 30, 1895, in the Serai, the chief government building in which the Vali and his chief officials reside. The massacre started by the shooting of the priest of Tevrick by Turkish soldiers when he and other Armenians were at the Serai trying to gain audience of the Vali.
Burying the Bodies after the Massacre at Erzeroum.—Page 451. This illustration was reproduced from a photograph taken in the Armenian cemetery, two days after the massacre. Two rows of dead, thirty-five deep, had already been laid down and partially covered with earth by laborers, when the photograph was taken. Four men had just deposited another corpse, and so started a third row. The open spaces between the bodies were filled up with skulls, thigh-bones, and other human remains disturbed by digging this grave, which was fifty-three feet square, for the reception of the slaughtered Armenians.
A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.—Page 470. About 1,000 Armenians were inhumanly butchered in the massacre of October 30, 1895. The illustration shows how their corpses were laid out in the cemetery, waiting until one large common grave could be dug for their reception.
Principal Street and Bazaar of Erzeroum.—Page 480. Erzeroum is a town of great antiquity. In 1201, the time of its capture by the Seejuks, 140,000 of its inhabitants were said to have been lost. Recent estimates of the population are from 50,000 to 100,000, of which, probably, two-thirds are Armenians. The circular-towers, shown in the illustration, with their conical tops, add a certain picturesqueness to the view, and are popularly reputed to be the tombs of holy men who died in the fourteenth century.
The Prison at Erzeroum.—Page 481. To describe the sufferings of a Turkish prison is impossible. It combines the stifling air of the Black-Hole of Calcutta, the stench of an open sewer, the poison of a yellow fever ward, the pangs of starvation, besides the horrors of the Inferno when Moslem criminals are shut in with Christian prisoners.
“It is a living grave, a visible hell, a world without God.” Men are suffering in nakedness and rags, and dying of hunger and disease, but there is no one to pity.
Trebizond.—Page 491. This city, the principal seaport for the Armenians, is on the southern coast of the Black sea, and has a population of about forty-five thousand. The old walls are now ruinous, but the engraving shows how formidable they must have been originally. Many Armenians were massacred at Trebizond in the autumn of 1895.