children behind, either in despair, or owing to illness or weakness which made them unable to carry them, so they threw them on the ground; some from natural affection could not do this and so perished in the desert, not parted from their infants. They told me that there were some among them who had not been used to walk for a single hour, having been brought up in luxury, with men to wait on them and women to attend them. These had fallen into the hands of the Kurds, who recognize no divine law, and who live on lofty mountains and in dense forests like beasts of prey; their honour was outraged and they died by brutal violence, many of them killing themselves rather than sacrifice their virtue to these ravening wolves.

We then proceeded in carts from Serûj to El-Raha (Urfa). On the way I saw crowds going on foot, whom from a distance I took for troops marching to the field of battle. On approaching, I found they were Armenian women, walking barefoot and weary, placed in ranks like the gendarmes who preceded and followed them. Whenever one of them lagged behind, a gendarme would beat her with the butt of his rifle, throwing her on her face, till she rose terrified and rejoined her companions. But if one lagged from sickness, she was either abandoned, alone in the wilderness, without help or comfort, to be a prey to wild beasts, or a gendarme ended her life by a bullet.

On arrival at Urfa, we learned that the Government had sent a force of gendarmes and police to the Armenian quarters of the town to collect their arms, subsequently dealing with these people as with others. As they were aware of what had happened to their kinsmen—the khâns at Urfa being full of women and children—they did not give up their arms, but showed armed resistance, killing one man of the police and three gendarmes. The authorities of Urfa applied for a force from Aleppo, and by order of Jemâl Pasha—the executioner of Syria—Fakhry Pasha came with cannon. He turned the Armenian quarters into a waste place, killing the men and the children, and great numbers of the women, except such as yielded themselves to share the fate of their sisters—expulsion on foot to Deir-el-Zûr, after the Pasha and his officers had selected the prettiest amongst them. Disease was raging among them; they were outraged by the Turks and Kurds; and hunger and thirst completed their extermination.

After leaving Urfa, we again saw throngs of women, exhausted by fatigue and misery, dying of hunger and thirst, and we saw the bodies of the dead lying by the roadside.

On our arrival at a place near a village called Kara Jevren, about six hours distant from Urfa, we stopped at a spring to breakfast and drink. I went a little apart, towards the source, and came upon a most appalling spectacle. A woman, partly unclothed, was lying prone, her chemise disordered and red with blood, with four bullet-wounds in her breast. I could not restrain myself, but wept bitterly. As I drew out a handkerchief to wipe away my tears, and looked round to see whether any of my companions had observed me, I saw a child not more than eight years old, lying on his face, his head cloven by an axe. This made my grief the more vehement, but my companions cut short my lamentations, for I heard the officer, Aarif Effendi, calling to the priest Isaac, and saying, "Come here at once," and I knew that he had seen something which had startled him. I went towards him, and what did I behold? Three children lying in the water, in terror of their lives from the Kurds, who had stripped them of their clothes and tortured them in various ways, their mother near by, moaning with pain and hunger. She told us her story, saying that she was from Erzeroum, and had been brought by the troops to this place with many other women after a journey of many days. After they had been plundered of money and clothing, and the prettiest women had been picked out and handed over to the Kurds, they reached this place, where Kurdish men and women collected and robbed them of all the clothes that remained on them. She herself had stayed here, as she was sick and her children would not leave her. The Kurds came upon them again and left them naked. The children had lain in the water in their terror, and she was at the point of death. The priest collected some articles of clothing and gave them to the woman and the children; the officer sent a man to the post of gendarmes which was near by, and ordered the gendarme whom the man brought with him to send on the woman and children to Urfa, and to bury the bodies which were near the guardhouse. The sick woman told me that the dead woman refused to yield herself to outrage, so they killed her and she died nobly, chaste and pure from defilement; to induce her to yield they killed her son beside her, but she was firm in her resolve and died heart-broken.

In the afternoon we went on towards Kara Jevren, and one of the drivers pointed out to us some high mounds, surrounded by stones and rocks, saying that here Zohrâb and Vartakis had been killed, they having been leading Notables among the Armenians, and their Deputies.

Krikôr Zohrâb and Vartakis.—No one is ignorant of who and what was Zohrâb, the Armenian Deputy for Constantinople, his name and repute being celebrated after the institution of the Chamber. He used to speak with learning and reflection, refuting objections by powerful arguments and convincing proofs. His speeches in the Chamber were mostly conclusive. He was learned in all subjects, but especially in the science of law, as he was a graduate of universities and had practised at the Bar for many years. He was endowed with eloquence and great powers of exposition; he was courageous, not to be turned from his purpose or intimidated from pursuing his national aims. When the Unionists realised that they were deficient in knowledge, understanding nothing about polity or administration, and not aware of the meaning of liberty or constitutional government, they resolved to return to the system of their Tartar forefathers, the devastation of cities and the slaughter of innocent men, as it was in that direction that their powers lay. They sent Zohrâb and his colleague Vartakis away from Constantinople, with orders that they should be killed on the way, and it was announced that they had been murdered by a band of brigands. They killed them in order that it might not be said that Armenians were more powerful, more learned, and more intelligent than Turks. Why should such bands murder none but Armenians? The falsity of the statement is obvious.

Zohrâb and Vartakis fell victims to their own courage and firmness of purpose; they were killed out of envy of their learning and their love for their own people, and for their tenacity in pursuing their own path. They were killed by that villain, Ahmed El-Serzi, one of the sworn men of the Unionists, he who murdered Zeki Bey; his story in the Ottoman upheaval is well known, and how the Unionists saved him from his fitting punishment and even from prison. A Kurd told me that Vartakis was one of the boldest and most courageous men who ever lived; he was chief of the Armenian bands in the time of Abdul-Hamîd; he was wounded in the foot by a cannon-ball whilst the Turkish troops were pursuing these bands, and was imprisoned either at Erzeroum or at Maaden, in the Vilayet of Diarbekir. The Sultan Abdul-Hamîd, through his officials, charged him to modify his attitude and acknowledge that he had been in error, when he should be pardoned and appointed to any post he might choose. He rejected this offer, saying, "I will not sell my conscience for a post, or say that the Government of Abdul-Hamîd is just, whilst I see its tyranny with my eyes and touch it with my hand."

It is said that the Unionists ordered that all the Armenian Deputies