and that words are the
stock-in-trade of the weak alone.

I observed that the crosses had been removed from the lofty steeples of
the churches, which are used as storehouses and markets for the keeping
and sale of the effects of the dead.

[Footnote D: Some remarks in this connection are omitted.--TRANSLATOR.]

METHODS OF SLAUGHTER.--These were of various kinds. An officer told me
that in the Vilayet of Bitlis the authorities collected the Armenians in
barns full of straw (or chaff), piling up straw in front of the door and
setting it on fire, so that the Armenians inside perished in the smoke.
He said that sometimes hundreds were put together in one barn. Other
modes of killing were also employed (at Bitlis). He told me, to my deep
sorrow, how he had seen a girl hold her lover in her embrace, and so
enter the barn to meet her death without a tremor.

At Moush, a part were killed in straw-barns, but the greater number by
shooting or stabbing with knives, the Government hiring butchers, who
received a Turkish pound each day as wages. A doctor, named Aziz Bey,
told me that when he was at Marzifun, in the Vilayet of Sivas, he heard
that a caravan of Armenians was being sent to execution. He went to the
Kaimakam and said to him: "You know I am a doctor, and there is no
difference between doctors and butchers, as doctors are mostly occupied
in cutting up mankind. And as the duties of a Kaimakam at this time are
also like our own--cutting up human bodies--I beg you to let me see this
surgical operation myself." Permission was given, and the doctor went.
He found four butchers, each with a long knife; the gendarmes divided
the Armenians into parties of ten, and sent them up to the butchers one
by one. The butcher told the Armenian to stretch out his neck; he did
so, and was slaughtered like a sheep. The doctor was amazed at their
steadfastness in presence of death, not saying a word, or showing any
sign of fear.

The gendarmes used also to bind the women and children and throw them
down from a very lofty eminence, so that they reached the ground
shattered to pieces. This place is said to be between Diarbekir and
Mardin, and the bones of the slain are there in heaps to this day.

Another informant told me that the Diarbekir authorities had killed the
Armenians either by shooting, by the butchers, or at times by putting
numbers of them in wells and caves, which were blocked up so that they
perished. Also they threw them i