Malatia, Dec. 22, 1895.

My Very Dear Son:—

We greet you with the fondest greeting, and it is the desire of our hearts that the good Lord should enable us to see each other again in this mortal flesh. In regard to ourselves, as to how we were, and what we are doing. We are all alive yet with our whole family, no loss of persons from among us. Don’t mourn for us. Others are mourning for their loved ones. Though in truth the grief and mourning of others belong to us also because we are all Armenians, one flesh and blood, and we all belong to the same nation.

I did not go to bring up the bride of our neighbor’s with the rest, so I was at home when the massacre began. You remember that there was a well in that quarter. The Turks killed the bridegroom, his brother, the priest, together with sixty-five other men, and threw them into that well. In another house they burned seventy-five men, and in still another forty-five men. Finally, I am unable to describe with my pen all that passed in those days and hours.

May the Lord preserve your dear lives, and give you peace and happiness. Your father.

Another Letter.

Malatia, Dec. 22, 1895.

My Dear Friend:—

I received your very kind letter about a week ago, for which I thank you very much, and I read it with great pleasure. But we do not get the boys’ letters regularly. It is nearly two months since the disaster occurred, and in that time I have received but one letter. The other day an Armenian handed me a letter that was torn into nearly a hundred pieces. I put all the pieces together and read it. It was also from the boys, and I read and was very glad. Now I will try to give you a little information about us. The first Monday I did not go to the market, for from Saturday I got somehow suspicious that there was something impending over the city, and I did not let father go either. My brother was to accompany those who were going to bring up a bride for my brother’s partner in business. While my brother was at the wedding house, they sent him on an errand to go and get a few policemen to accompany them as protection in bringing the bride. Just at the moment when my brother was on his way to the station-house, he sees there was confusion in the market; then he drops the matter of bringing a policeman, but goes to the market and closes the shop, and then turns towards home in a hurry. While on his way, some men fired at him several times, but fortunately he was not hurt. He comes as far as to one of our neighbors, and there drops down exhausted. They came and brought me the news that he was there. Then I plucked up all the courage I could, and went and brought him home. An hour or so after, the Turks came and besieged that same quarter and killed about thirty persons. On Tuesday, very early in the morning, we left everything, house, property, and goods, and just to save our lives we fled to the new church, and I don’t know what became of the rest. We remained there in the church until Friday; after that we came out of the church, being a little assured of safety, and have been living on the provision that the government allowed us, but that also ceased a few days since. When we came back home again we did not find a single thing; they had swept off everything. We brought a matting from some place, and six of us sleep in one bed. Some sleep on hay. May you never have to endure such hardships. This incident seems worse than the earthquake or the cholera, or the fire. May the good Lord preserve us from things worse than these. Our life is not worth the living. We don’t know the exact number of the killed. Malatia is altogether a ruin. It is a worse ruin than the city of Anni, and even worse than Sassoun. It is beyond conception, one cannot keep account of it. May the Lord write it down in his own account book, so that he should take the account in the day of judgment.

Please excuse all my shortcomings, because I am out of myself. Our love to all the friends over there.

Yours truly,

P.S. Please tell the boys to know the value of money, and not waste neither their time nor their money in vain. For we have no one to look for but to God in heaven, and after Him to them on earth. For the value of a son is known in the time of adversity, when he helps his elders or parents. Let them not yet send any money, for there are no brokers left where we can change it.

THE CITY OF SIVAS AND THE ATROCITIES.

Sivas is the seat of the vilayet or province of Sivas. The Governor-General of that province resides there. The population is about 30,000; one-third are Christian Armenians, and there are many Armenian Christian towns and villages round about, so that, if the Armenians are not more numerous than the Mohammedans, they equal them in number. Sivas is a missionary station, and during the atrocities, the Protestant Armenian pastor also was killed. His name was Garabet-Kilitjiam, one of the most gifted ministers of the gospel, my personal friend and successor. After I resigned my pastorate at Talas, Cesarea, he succeeded me. He was offered the choice of accepting Mohammedanism, but refused it, and then he was martyred.

In the city and province of Sivas during the recent atrocities about 10,000 Armenians were killed, and many villages and towns were plundered and destroyed.

The following is a press dispatch:—