Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-09-10

Pninfnl Scenes in Syrin-Utter Destitutlon
and Misery. of the Sufferers-Ch
Dying of Want.
A correspondent writing from Damascus
says
1t is impossible to give an adequate idea
of the utter misery of these poor creatures,
which was the greater, as all had been for
merly more or less comfortably of-some in
aifiuent circumstances. The women had
really barely enough to cover them. They
were just as they had fed from their homes
on the 9th of July, when the massacre began,
and had since been iving-in the dog days
of q Syrian summer-on very Indifferent
food, many being so weakened by starvation
that they could hardly sit on their horses or
mules. A voice called me by name out of
the crowd, and l went to see who it was.
The speaker was a gaunt, lean man, with
nothing but an old pair of torn drawers upon
him. He was riding miserable stumbling
mule, and carrying before him young child,
evidently dying; while behind him olung an
other infant, blind from opthalmia, with
which, by the way three-fourths of the
caravan were afflicted. ..H
II took me some time-and not until he
told me his name-to recognize in the lean,
hungry-looking, ragged beggar before me,
the trim, snug, wealthy merchant, whom 1
had known so well a few months before
whose. house at Damascus was palace which
had cost him nearly 100000 sterling, whose
wife's jewels were worth at least $4,000 ster-
ling and whose signature for any thing un-
der flO, 900 sterling would be considered as
good as the bank. l asked the poor fellow
whether, when the massacre began, he had
been able to save any thing. He replied
"Nothing" Books, bills bonds, cash, Jewels,
goods house, furniture, clothes, every thing,
plundered or burnt. The man is literally a
beggar. And, e1 uno disco o1aneS, there are
more than two thousand poor men, who have
come or are coming here from that accursed
| place, who are in exactly the same condition.
| Of the poor women | can hardly speak.
| God in His mercy forbid that in England our
mothers and wives should know even in a
| dream, the utter, hopeless misery these poor
| creatures have suffered, because they were
if only in name-Christians.
Hundreds of these women-ladies in rank
and accustomed to every luxury in their own
homes, who would never appear in public
except yelled, and knew not what days
hardship meant-hundreds arrived here with
but rag round their loins and over their
shoulders having ridden on hard wooden
| pack-saddles, over the anti-Lebanon ridge,
across the valley of Celo-Syria, and through
the defiles of Lebanon, burned up by fiery
sun by day, and chilled to death by bitter
wind at night. More than hundred pool
children died of want and exposure on the
road; many women were confined and yet
obliged to move on with the carayan; scores
have reached Beirut only to die and yet
| those that have left and are now here are the
most fortunate of the Christian population
of Damascus. / need not detail the fate
worse than death which hundreds have met
with, nor enumerate how many have been
carried off by the Bedouins, Kurds, and
other miscreants, who came to help in the
work set on foot by their co-religionists