The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1896-06-04
DEATH THEIR ONLY DELIVER
ANCE

But this was better than Mohammedan
| captivity for Christian women which is
and has been the common lot of beautiful
girls and women for ages passed, when
a Kurd or Turk could take them alive.
One band of brave women worthy of
admiration of the whole world, had de-
Tended their little ones, their lives and
their honor, day and night till over
whemed by numbers, when, with their
babes upon their backs and their children
by their sides in the fight, finding them
selves surrounded, cut off from all posi-
bic chance of escape, they followed their
heroic leader, as she plunged over Il preci-
pice, with her babe in her arms, to be
dashed to death.
Silently the children followed their
mothers like lambs to the slaughter. till
the deep ravine was so filled with the dy-
ing and the dead that the last to leap fell
unhurt upon the living and lifeless forms
beneath them.
About 80 women and children were
taken alive. but they bore their torture
brayely, and no amount of agony could
compel them to deny their faith or betray
their friends, faithful through untold tor
ture and agony, even unto death.
WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER.
Thousands of Christian villages were
surrounded without warning by soldiers
and Kurds and literally wiped off the face
of the earth by the most internal fiendish-
ness imaginable After all the resources
of robbery, rapine, outrage and torture had
been exhausted, prisoners, pleading for
mercy, had been killed or crippled, were
bound and piled between layers of brush
wood, saturated with kerosene, the whole
being fired, and living and dead cremated
together.
An Armenian muleteer who was pressed
into service for transportation of troops,
testified to facts which Turkish soldiers
boosted of openly as to their awful butch,
cry. Whole villages were laid waste
with no living being left, and the stencil
from the unburied or unburned bodies was
almost uncomfortable, though thousands
had been burned or buried.
Hundreds of perishing people would
come to commanding officers and throw
themselves upon their mercy, but each day
after shutdown they were driven off togeth-
er to be slaughtered, their cries filling the
air. One long line of prisoners bound to-
gether was led to a trench and there cut
down, one after another, in cold blood,
to tumble into the ditch and be buried
dead or alive.
The larger Armenian cities were the
scenes of indescribable diabolism, in one
instance the soldiers requested about 5000
Christians to crowd into q church, pre-
tending that they would be protected
there. as.
The doors and windows were then barri-
caded to prevent escape, the building flood
ed with kerosene from the roof, and fired;
only about sixty persons escaping from
this fearful holocaust.
TURKISH TORTURES.
Christians were crowded into their de-
spoiled homes and their houses fired, while
the fends without flung back upon their
bayOnets those who tried to fly from the
flames.
While the cruel Kurds prefer to kill
people with bullets and daggers the Turks
delight in torturing them to death, cutting
their veins open, gouging out their eyes
and pulling out their tongues, tearing off
their ears, severing their hands and their
feet, tlaying them alive, branding and
burning them with red hot irons, tearing
out their teeth, cutting off their fingers
and toes one at time, slicing off portions
of flesh, then leaving them to lnger till
relieved by death.
One witness testified to seeing a Turk
ish officer bind an aged Armenian head
downwards, then slowly cut him through
with an ak, while from the same hiding
place he saw soldiers torturing two priests,
one of whom was his own father. After
failing to force them to deny their faith !
they gouged out their eyes, then compelled !
them to dance while they beat and gashed |
them brutally, and after death the body |
of one was foYnd with neither eyes, nose.
ears, lips nor skin upon his head
Long trenches were dug and hundreds |
of wounded. dying and dead were flung
in together to get them out of the way,
but dreadful as such burial alive must |
be. 1t was mercy compared to a Turk |
ish prison.
The most horrible death Imaginable |