A History of Protestant missions in the near East

Protestant Missions in Turkey and Armenia 147
which I visited to-day. There were one hundred and fifty
houses in it,
of which only about fifteen are left standing.
All the rest have been almost entirely destroyed. There are
only bare walls where a beautiful village once stood. The
people are in rags. There are beds in only twelve of the
houses. The people are sleeping on the floor all winter without
any bedclothes. The trees have their tops lopped off,
leaving only the stems. You find no sheep nor cattle, and
only two dogs there. Neither grain nor any other victual are
in the houses. In some there may be a little bread, but
the chief food consists of grass, which lies in little bundles
on the floor. The faces of the women and children is
pinched and sallow. I asked a little fellow whether he had
eaten any bread that day : No, only some grass.' Others
'
had pieces of bread only the size of my hand. While we
were sitting on the ground surrounded by most of the village
people, some of the children were continually pulling up grass
and eating it,
roots and all. As far as I could judge, only a
few days stood between them and death by starvation."
" On my passing through a village lately, all the inhabitants
came out into the street, crying, 'We are hungry, hungry,
hungry ! I am still haunted by this cry. Their fields are
'
laid waste, their houses are in ruins and there is no hand
them. What is to be the end of it all ?
"
stretched out to help
" This morning some villagers came from Terjan, the centre
of a group of villages, asking for help. Their very appearance
was their strongest appeal to our pity. They had walked for
eighteen hours over two snow-covered ranges of hills. One
of the men, who had once been able to accommodate eighteen
or twenty visitors at once in his house, was in rags that would
hardly have clad him sufficiently in summer. Another man
of gigantic stature had had his arms crippled by the swords
of the soldiers. The villagers who had sent this deputation
were in want of everything that the human being needs ;
neither mattress nor bedclothes had been left them, and all
through the winter months they had slept on straw and hay.
This was the way they managed at : first
night straw was