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Men, women, and children were most barbarously slaughtered—unnamable outrages were perpetrated on all. The less horrible outrages were some of the following: bayoneting the men, and in this wounded condition either burying or burning them; outraging women and then dispatching them with bayonets or swords; ripping up pregnant women; impaling infants and children on the bayonet, or dispatching them with the sword; houses fired, and the inmates driven back into the flames.

The unspeakable horror of those three weeks must have sent many a one crazy. The story is told that one soldier found a comely infant and took compassion on it and wished to save it. The mother was found in a crowd of poor, wretched women, but she was raving, calling for her children. She did not recognize the child, and nothing was left to the soldier but to dispatch it.

[Efforts to block the Commission and put the country in shape for inspection by emptying prisons of innocent people.]

B..., Dec. 29, 1894.

The Bitlis Governor asks for a cordon on Moosh, as there is cholera reported there. So the Consular Commission is delayed. The Turkish Commission is at Moosh now. Only, the president of it was recalled. In the meantime Sassoun refugees are scattered over the country, begging. Their stories, together with the stories of the soldiers, confirm the most horrible of the reports of cruelty.