From May until October the Ottoman Government pursued methodically a plan of extermination far more hellish than the worst possible massacre. Orders for deportation of the entire Armenian population to Mesopotamia were despatched to every province of Asia Minor. These orders were explicit and detailed. No hamlet was too insignificant to be missed. The news was given by town criers that _every_ Armenian was to be ready to leave at a certain hour for an unknown destination. There were no exceptions for the aged, the ill, the women in pregnancy. Only rich merchants and bankers and good-looking women and girls were allowed to escape by professing Islâm, and let it be said to their everlasting honour that few availed themselves of this means of escape. The time given varied from two days to six hours. No household goods, no animals, no extra clothing could be taken along. Food supply and bedding was limited to what a person could carry. And they had to go _on foot_ under the burning sun through parched valleys and over snow-covered mountain passes, a journey of from three to eight weeks. When they passed through Christian villages where the deportation order had not yet been received, the travellers were not allowed to receive food or ministrations of any sort. The sick and the aged and the wee children fell by the roadside, and did not rise again. Women in childbirth were urged along by bayonets and whips until the moment of deliverance came, and were left to bleed to death. The likely girls were seized for harems, or raped day after day by the guards until death came as a merciful release. Those who could committed suicide. Mothers went crazy, and threw their children into the river to end their sufferings. Hundreds of thousands of women and children died of hunger, of thirst, of exposure, of shame. The pitiful caravans thinned out, first daily, and later hourly. Death became the one thing to be longed for: for how can hope live, how can strength remain, even to the fittest, in a journey that has no end? And if they turned to right or left from that road to hell, they were shot or speared. Kurds and mounted peasants hunted down those who succeeded in escaping the roadside guards.