Daily capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1896-1899, 1896-06-01
THEIR ONLY pELNERANcE.

women for ages passed, when a Kur'
or Turk could take them alive.
One band OF brave women, worth!
Of the admiration OF the whole world
had defended their little ones. theii
lives, and their honor, day and night
I'LL overwhelmed by numbers, when
with their babes upon their backs,
and their children by their sides In
the fight, finding themselves. sur
rounded, cut off from all possible
chance Of escape, they followed their
heroic leader, as she plunged over a
precipice, with her babe in her arms,
to be- dashed to death.
Silently the children followed their
mothers like lambs TO the slaugh-
/ ter, til the deep ravine was so filled
with the dying and the dead, that the
last 10 leap fell unhurt upon the liv-
Ing aud llfeless forms beneath them.
About 100 women aud children were
taken alive, but they bore their tor
/ ture brqyely, and no amount Of
agony could compel them 10 deny
their faith or betray their friends,
faithful through untold torture and
agony, even unto death.
WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER.
Thousands Of Christian villages
were surrounded, without warming, by
soldiers and Kurds, and literally wiped
of the face OF tine earth by the most
Internal tiendlshness Imaginable.
After all the resources OF robbery,
raplne, outrage and torture had been
exhausted, prisoners, pleading for
mercy, having been killed or crippled,
were bound and'piled between layers
OF brushwood, saturated with kero-
sene, 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 boasted of openly as
To their awful butcherles. Whole vii
lagos were laid waste with no living
being left, and the stencil from
the unburied or unburned bodies was
almost unendurable, though thous-
sands had been burned or buried.
Hundreds OF perlshlng people would
come 10 commanding officers and
throw themselves upon their mercy,
but each day after sundown they were
driven of together TO be slaughtered,
their cries filling the air. One long
line OF prisoners bound together, was
led 20 trench, and there cut down,
one after the other In cold blood, TO
tumble'into the ditch and be buried
dead or alive.
The larger Armenian cities were
the scenes OF indescrlbable dlabolism,
In one instance the soldiers requested
as many as 5000 Christians 10 crowd
into n church, pretending that they
would be protected there.
The doors and windows were then
barrlcaded, TO prevent escape, the
building flooded with kerosene from
the roof, and fired; only about sixty
persons escaping from this fearful
holocaust.
TURKISH ToRTuREs.
Christians were crowded into their
despoiled homes, aud their houses
fired, while the tiends without flung
back upon their bayonets, those who
tried TO fly from the flames.
While the cruel Kurds prefer TO XIII
people with bullets aud daggers, the
Turks delight In torturlng them 10
death, cutting their veins open, goug-
ing out their eyes, and pulling out
their tongues, tearing OF their ears,
Severing their hands and their feet,
laying them alive, branding aud
burning them with red hot irons, /
tearing out their teeth, cutting of
their tingers aud toes one at a time,
slieing on portions OF flesn, then leav.
Ing TO linger tin relieved by death. l
One witness testified 10 seeing
Turkish onicer bind an aged Armen-
ian head downwards, then slowly cut
him through with an axe, while from
the same hiding place he saw soldiers
torturlng two priests, one Of whom
was his own father, After failing 20
q