burned were
bad enough, so were burning cottages, battered-in doors, and smashed
windows, but these things were nothing to the sight of dead men and
women scattered about the streets. The men were not men of war; their
peasant garbs bespoke them men of peace. Gallantly had they fought,
however, in defence of hearth and home, but all in vain. The trained
miscreants who had attacked them form a part of the Turkish army, which
receives no pay, and is therefore virtually told that, after fighting,
their recognised duty is to pillage. But the brutes had done more than
this. As we trotted through the little hamlet, which was peopled only
by the dead, we observed that most of the men had been more or less
mutilated, some in a very horrible manner, and the poor fellow who had
escaped said that this had been done while the men were alive.

Dismounting, we examined some of the cottages, and there beheld sights
at the mere recollection of which I shudder. In one I saw women and
children heaped together, with their limbs cut and garments torn off,
while their long hair lay tossed about on the bloody floors. In
another, which was on fire, I could see the limbs of corpses that were
being roasted, or had already been burnt to cinders.

Not one soul in that village was left alive. How many had escaped we
could not ascertain, for the wounded man had fallen into such a state of
wild horror that he could not be got to understand or answer questions.
At one cottage door which we came to he stood with clasped hands gazing
at the dead inside, like one petrified. Some one touched him on the
shoulder, when we were ready to leave the place, but he merely muttered,
"My home!"

As we could do no good there, and were anxious to pursue the fiends who
had left such desolation behind them, we again urged the man to come
with us, but he refused. On our attempting to use gentle force, he
started suddenly, drew a knife from his girdle, and plunging it into his
heart, fell dead on his own threshold.

It was with a sense of relief, as if we had been delivered from a dark
oppressive dungeon, that we galloped out of the village, and followed
the tracks of the Bashi-Bazouks, which were luckily visible on the
plain. Soon we traced them to a road that led towards the mountainous
country. There was no other road there, and as this one had neither
fork nor diverging path, we had no difficulty in following them up.

It was night, however, before