The American Red Cross Bulletin (Vol. IV, No. 4, October 1909)American National Red Cross
History
The American Red Cross Bulletin (Vol. IV, No. 4, October 1909)
American National Red Cross
American National Red Cross -- Periodicals; Red Cross and Red Crescent -- Periodicals
All the tradesmen’s shops and merchants’ storehouses in Kessab are
burned. In fact, the whole market is in ashes. The Roman Catholic and
Protestant Churches are completely burned. The latter was a spacious
building, seating a congregation of 1,800. The American Mission
residence, occupied by Miss E. M. Chambers, was burned; so, also, the
Girls’ High School (American property), the Boys’ Grammar School, and
the Protestant parsonage; 530 houses, including the homes of all the
well-to-do families in Kessab, are also destroyed by fire. The 700 houses
which remain, plundered, but not burned, are small one-room or two-room
houses, belonging to laborers and other poor people. In Ekizolook 38
homes are burned; 22 remain. In Kaladouran 65 are gone; 135 are left. In
Duz Aghaj 24 are burned; 1 remains. In Keorkine 55 are burned; 45 remain.
On Saturday one of the Latin priests, Father Sabatine, made the journey
to Latakia, at considerable risk, in order to appeal for help. Whether it
was by the influence of his telegrams or the ones sent twenty-four hours
before by the Protestant physician, Dr. Apelian, I do not know, but at
all events on Sunday morning a Messageries Maritime steamer came down the
coast toward the cove at Kaladouran, at the foot of Mount Cassius. The
news was carried from mouth to mouth to all the hiding places among the
crags and ravines, so that within a few hours the fugitives began to pour
in streams down the Kaladouran gorge to the seashore. The painfulness of
that descent can scarcely be imagined. Most of the people had not had
anything to eat for two days. Many of them had become separated from
their families and were now plodding down toward the sea with a strange
blend of hope and despair. The suffering of many of the women was severe
indeed. Fourteen children were born during that flight, and the mothers
had no alternative but to press onward as best they could in the wake of
the multitude.
An 8-year-old little boy was captured by the Turks and carried off to
become a Moslem. He was given a Mohammedan name and made to wear a little
turban. He acted very demurely and kept quiet. But when a chance offered,
as he had permission to go to a nearby well, he ran for dear life and got
away. With an instinct as keen as that of a wild creature of the woods,
he made his way among the mountains and across the maritime plain forty
miles, to Latakia, where he found his mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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