brutality of their “protectors,” resembled some new and strange animal species. Yet for the better part of six months, from April to October, 1915, practically all the highways in Asia Minor were crowded with these unearthly bands of exiles. They could be seen winding in and out of every valley and climbing up the sides of nearly every mountain--moving on and on, they scarcely knew whither, except that every road led to death. Village after village and town after town was evacuated of its Armenian population, under the distressing circumstances already detailed. In these six months, as far as can be ascertained, about 1,200,000 people started on this journey to the Syrian desert. “Pray for us,” they would say as they left their homes--the homes in which their ancestors had lived for 2,500 years. “We shall not see you in this world again, but sometime we shall meet. Pray for us!” The Armenians had hardly left their native villages when the persecutions began. The roads over which they travelled were little more than donkey-paths; and what had started a few hours before as an orderly procession soon became a dishevelled and scrambling mob. Women were separated from their children and husbands from their wives. The old people soon lost contact with their families and became exhausted and footsore. The Turkish drivers of the ox-carts, after extorting the last penny from their charges, would suddenly dump them and their belongings into the road, turn around and return to the village for other victims. Thus in a short time practically everybody, young and old, was compelled to travel on foot. The gendarmes whom the Government had sent supposedly to protect the exiles, in a very few hours became their tormentors. They followed their charges with fixed bayonets, prodding anyone who showed any tendency to slacken the pace. Those who attempted to stop for rest, or who fell exhausted on the road, were compelled, with the utmost brutality, to rejoin the moving throng. They even prodded pregnant women with bayonets; if one, as frequently happened, gave birth along the road, she was immediately forced to get up and rejoin the marchers. The whole course of the journey became a perpetual struggle with the Moslem inhabitants. Detachments of gendarmes would go ahead notifying the Kurdish tribes that their victims were approaching, and Turkish peasants were also informed that their long-waited opportunity had arrived. The Government even opened the prisons and set free the convicts, on the understanding that they should behave like good Moslems to the approaching Armenians. Thus every caravan had a continuous battle for existence with several classes of enemies--their accompanying gendarmes, the Turkish peasants and villagers, the Kurdish tribes and bands of _Chétés_ or brigands. And we must always keep in mind that the men who might have defended these wayfarers had nearly all been killed or forced