m their native land and
the graves of their forefathers."

During this time of terror and destruction, several priests had lost
their lives, some under circumstances of horrible barbarity. New
telegrams continued to announce to the Christians of the West that their
brethren were daily called on to lay down their lives. Thus, on the 17th
of October, a dispatch to the venerable superior of the seminary of
Foreign Missions at Paris, announced that, besides one more missionary
and ten native priests, seven thousand Christians had just been
massacred. Letters, which arrived later, contained painful particulars
of what had before been known only in its general outline of horror.

Five of the refugee missionaries wrote on the 15th of August: "We dare
not enter into new details on this catastrophe. We will only say that to
find in history a disaster to be compared to ours, it would be necessary
to go back beyond the Sicilian Vespers, to the acts of vandalism of the
savage hordes which swept over, one by one, the vast provinces of the
Roman empire. A fact which adds to the horror is that this series of
slaughters and butcheries of our Christians has been done in a country
without means of communication or defence. In this way conflagration and
carnage have spread as widely as our Catholic parishes were numerous.
They were scattered here and there over a great extent of territory,
from the north to the south. On this account the murderers and
incendiaries have been able to accomplish their infamous designs with
impunity. We believe that never have there been seen so many massacres
and conflagrations, following one on the other for two or three weeks
continuously, on so vast a scale and at so many points at the same time,
with such ferocity and rage on the part of unnatural fellow-countrymen
who were exterminating their unarmed brothers.

"Alas! our souls are sad unto death at the sight of the extent of our
misfortunes. New dispatches will soon inform you how many survivors are
left of twenty-nine missionaries and seventeen native priests, of more
than forty male teachers of religion, of one hundred and twenty students
of Latin and theology, of four hundred and fifty native religious
sisters, and of forty-one thousand Christians.

"In order that these almost incredible misfortunes may not be thought
exaggerated, even by those who are ill-disposed, God has permitted that
laymen in great number--officers and soldiers of the Frenc