This church was built entirely of stone and may be said to be absolutely fire-proof. It was to this edifice from fifteen hundred to two thousand of the people fled when the general massacre began, and the story of what took place within its walls on that awful day will never be fully known. These nearly two thousand victims were at the mercy of the merciless soldiers and the worse than merciless mob. The soldiers were first to enter, but they soon allowed the promiscuous rabble to follow and share with them in the carnival of debauchery and blood. The fiendish fanaticism of these Moslems had its climax in setting fire to the victims of their wild fury. There being no wood finishing on the inside of the church, and little or no inflammable furnishings, one can only conjecture how they succeeded in transforming this multitude of human sacrifices into the great mass of bones and ashes to which they were all reduced by the following morning. For two or three days afterward a number of hammals (Turkish porters), were engaged in carrying the bones and charred remains of these victims from the church to a place close in the rear of the American mission premises, where they were dumped over a portion of the old wall of the city. Apart altogether from those killed and burned in the church, the bodies of over one thousand five hundred by actual count were dragged, usually by the legs, and in considerable numbers at a time, by animals, to a large trench dug for the purpose on the outskirts of the city. There they lie in one, irregular mass, awaiting the day when all wrongs shall be righted. As many as three hundred bodies were taken from one of the large cistern wells some days after the massacre, while another furnished over fifty and yet another about thirty. Scarcely a single Gregorian or Protestant home escaped the general pillage and bloodshed and the total number of victims in this last massacre in Oorfa must now be put down at four thousand. Read this farewell which seemed to come out from the tombs of the dead: Some days before the massacre at Oorfa the Armenians were warned that it was impending, but the officials prevented them from leaving the town. During the suspense the Gregorian clergy compiled a letter which they sent secretly to Aintab, whence it was forwarded to Europe. The Arch Priest Stephen and four other priests were subsequently slain before the altar while celebrating the Eucharist. The letter contained messages to the Sultan and to the Gregorian's Moslem fellow-countrymen, and reproached their European brethren for standing by, watching the bloody work. It also contained the following: