The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of SmyrnaHorton, George
History
The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of Smyrna
Horton, George
Christians -- Turkey; Fires -- Turkey -- İzmir; Greeks -- Turkey; Turkey; İzmir (Turkey) -- History
“The next place where there was a large encampment was at
Osmanieh where there was said to be about fifty thousand; their
condition was terrible. They were camped on both sides of
the railway track, extending fully half a mile on each side.
Here they had two wells from whence they could get water, one
of which was very far from the encampment, the other at the
railway station platform. At daybreak, the Armenians came in
crowds, women and children and old men, to get to the well to
get water. They fought among themselves for a place at the
well, and the gendarmes, to keep them in order, whipped several
people. I saw women and children repeatedly struck with whips
and sticks in the hands of the gendarmes. Later I had occasion
to pass through the camp on the way to the town of Osmanieh
and had an opportunity to see the condition of the people.
They were living in tents like those above described and their
condition was miserable. The site of the encampment had been
used several times by different caravans of Armenians and no
attempt at sanitation had been made by either the Turks or the
Armenians themselves, with the result that the ground was in
a deplorable condition, and the stench in the early morning
was beyond description. At Osmanieh, they were selling their
possessions in order to obtain money to buy food. One old man
begged me to buy his silver snuff-box for a piaster in order
that he might be able to buy some bread.
“From Osmanieh, I traveled by carriage to Rajo and passed
thousands of Armenians en route to Aleppo. They were going
in ox-carts, on horseback, donkeys and on foot, the most
of them children, women and old men. I spoke to several of
these people, some of whom had been educated in the American
Mission Schools. They told me that they had traveled for two
months. They were without money and food and several expressed
their wish that they could die rather than go on and endure
the sufferings that they were undergoing. The people on the
road were carrying with them practically all their household
possessions and those who had no carts or animals were carrying
them on their backs. It was not unusual to see a woman with
a big pack wrapped up in a mattress and a little child a few
months old on the top of the pack. They were mostly bareheaded,
and their faces were swollen from the sun and exposure. Many
had no shoes on, and some had their feet wrapped in old pieces
of rags, which they had torn from their clothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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