Old and young people were the chief components of the procession. Here there passed a boy hardly over ten years of age, overburdened by a smaller child upon his back; there a woman, with back bent by age, crawling painfully along by the aid of her staff; now a wee infant, crying for its mother lost on the march, on the heels of an old patriarch, dragging along his last possession, a little donkey; then a woman, evidently heavy with child, smothering a moan of pain at each forced step. Young women and men of middle age were noticeable by their absence. From various reports I have heard, it would appear that many exiles have been arriving by train, and that the total number that has passed this way now reaches 22,000.
From a person who has passed that way, I learn that, so far as he could judge, all Armenians south of Ismid were being exiled, and from the same informant, whose word cannot be questioned, I hear that thousands of Armenians were passed by him on the road. They were in the most horrible condition. At Osmania there were some 8,000 exiles quartered. He tells me that for some miles out from this place a most foul odour was noticeable, like that rising from a dirty chicken-run. Upon approaching the low ground on which the exiles were concentrated, the odour became sickening and noisome flies swarmed about him. Passing through the encampment, he saw many people ill, and the bodies of others half-submerged in the water that had collected in pools on the low-lying ground. Some told him they were only waiting for death to free them. On the road from there to Aleppo he passed thousands of exiles on the march, and at a small town near Aleppo he found about 100,000 Armenians encamped. He says that the mortality among these was very great. They had no food nor money to buy any, as it appeared that many convoys had been plundered on the road of what little they possessed by successive armed bands. The party of which my informant was a member had several times been accosted by armed persons in uniform, who thought they were Armenians.
I have heard from a source not quite so authentic, but in which a great deal of confidence may be placed, that the country lying north and north-east of Marash is being entirely denuded of Armenians; that at Homs there was a concentration camp of about 30,000, practically all without shelter; that there had been a massacre at Diyarbekir; that exiles from Kaisaria were allowed to sell their property (a small price only could be obtained in this forced sale) before being sent to Der-el-Zor. From this same source I was also informed that it was rumoured that many exiles had been drowned (by boats being overturned, and so on) in the Euphrates River, while making their crossing.
Just within the last few days—it is now the 3rd October—I was told by an eye-witness that a massacre took place on the 19th September at Ourfa, and that the Armenians were shot, stabbed, bayoneted or flayed by the population in general that day, but that afterwards the slaughter was still being continued by soldiers with bayonets and sharp sabres when this person left on the 22nd. It appears that the Armenian men were collected together, and that one by one they were led out to be slashed up and cut down by the long sabre-knives. In the first day’s massacre three French and Russian civil prisoners were wounded by knife or flail; but I gathered that they soon recovered and that that was all that happened to these prisoners. The person who came from Ourfa told me that en route many women, children and old men were passed, and that soldiers were seen to strike some of these when they stopped to get a drink of water. Soldiers were overheard to say: “Wait until we get you to the Euphrates, and see what happens to you there!” or words to that effect. This information was given me by a person who, as stated above, was actually present at the massacre and who heard the remark above mentioned.
I do not know whether I shall be able to get this through or not. In every instance the faith that might be placed in statements has been indicated as precisely as the writer is able to judge; he can vouch absolutely, of course, only for the things seen or heard by himself as related above.
At Damascus everything appears to be very quiet. An egg was thrown into my carriage yesterday, the 2nd October, but that was by a small boy and indicated little. I do not believe that any trouble from the population is to be feared, unless incited by authority, and of this I have no apprehension.
144. EXILES ON THE EUPHRATES: RECORD, DATED ERZEROUM, JUNE, 1915, BY M. HENRY BARBY, OF AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. H. TOROYAN, AN ARMENIAN PHYSICIAN FORMERLY IN THE SERVICE OF THE OTTOMAN ARMY; PUBLISHED IN “LE JOURNAL,” OF PARIS, 13th JULY, 1916.
Along the burning banks of the distant Euphrates, between sultry Mesopotamia and the Badiet-esh-Sham, the desolate desert of Syria, are encamped the several thousands of deported Armenians who have escaped the great massacre.
Their condition there is such that no words can express the horror of it. That is the unanimous testimony of the rare travellers who have succeeded in visiting the camps where the unhappy victims are dying off, between Aleppo and Baghdad. They are subjected to frightful sufferings—without shelter either against the deadly cold of last winter or against the terrific heat of the present summer, which grows more pitiless every day—and daily they are perishing in great numbers, though those struck down by death are the least to be pitied.
I am now in a position to cite unimpeachable testimony as to the facts of these unheard-of atrocities.