The above-mentioned 800 Armenians had been deported from the district of Marash. They had been told that they would be taken to Aintab, and they were to provide themselves with food for two days. When they reached the neighbourhood of Aintab the soldiers said: "We have made a mistake, we were meant to go to Nissibin." No food was supplied by the authorities, and no opportunities for the purchase of provisions were given. At Nissibin the word went round: "We came the wrong way; we were meant to go to Mumbidj." There again the soldiers said: "We came the wrong way; we were meant to go to Bab." In this manner they had to wander about for seventeen days, abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of their escort. During the whole time no provisions were supplied by the Government, and their scanty possessions had to be given away in exchange for bread. One mother, whose eldest daughter was taken away by force, threw herself in despair into the Euphrates with her two remaining children. Said, an emigrant from Tripoli, who had been a groom in Mr. L.'s stables for four years with a monthly salary of 400 piastres (about £3), enlisted as a volunteer for the war, in order to be able, according to his own statement, to take part in the slaughter of a few Armenians. A nice house in an Armenian village near Ourfa was promised him (he hinted) by way of reward. Two Circassians who were in the service of Mr. E., a storekeeper, enlisted as volunteers for the war on the same ground. The head of a Circassian village community, Tchordekli, speaking of the war volunteers from his village, said to an acquaintance of mine: "Ev yikmak itchun giderler" (They go in order to ruin whole families). At Arab Pounar a Turkish Major, who spoke German, expressed himself as follows: "I and my brother took possession of a young girl at Ras-el-Ain, who had been left on the road. We are very angry with the Germans for doing such things." When I contradicted them, they said: "The Chief of the General Staff is a German; von der Goltz is Commander-in-Chief, and ever so many German officers are in our Army. Our Koran does not permit such treatment as the Armenians have to suffer now." [22] At Nuss Tell a Mohammedan inspector made similar remarks to a clerk. When I taxed him with this utterance in the presence of others, he said: "It is not only I who say this; everyone will tell you the same tale." At Biredjik the prisons are filled every day and emptied over night. Tell Armen, a village of 3,000 inhabitants, was raided, the inhabitants were massacred, thrown dead or alive into the wells, or burnt. Major von Mikusch was a witness of the devastation. A German cavalry captain saw unburied corpses between Diyarbekir and Ourfa on both sides of the road, with their throats cut. Innumerable unburied corpses of children were seen on the way by Mr. S.