TEE TURKISH ATROCITIES.

Evening Star, Issue 4257, 18 October 1876, Page 1

TEE TURKISH ATROCITIES.

The following thrilling aooouutof the he#nble atrocities of the Burks in Bulgaria is condensed from the letter of the special commissioner of the London • Daily J&ws' i ai f r , Bazard j ik * August Z After h ® supped <> { and that there is now nothing which he la not prepared to believe the Turks capable bt He goes on to describe his journey to Batak, whither he was accompanied by Mr Sohuyier, the American commissioner charged with the conduct of the inquiry bn behsOf of ma country as to the outrages. Thus he tells one or two of the harrowing «rigM» they saw in the village of Batak t a rau) or BLO d, ■ ‘ 1 .observed nothing peculiar,” writes the commissioner, "until my horse stumbled, when looking down I pereeived he had stumbled upon a human body partly hid in the grass. It was quite dry and hard. Ad might, to all appearances, have been there for two or three years, so well had the dqgi done their work. A few steps further there was another, and beside it part of a ‘skrieton» likewise white and diy. As ,l #W ascended, bones, skeletons, and skulls became more frequent, hut here they had hot been picked so clean, for there were frag* meats of half-dry. half-pntrid flesh stfll clinging to them. At last we came to a VIM of little plateau, or shelf in the hill-sidn where the ground was nearly level, withthe exception of a little indentation, where the head of a hollow broke through. We rode towards- this with the intention crossing it, bnt all suddenly dfew ft with an exclamation of horror, 'for right before us, almost beneath Jour horses* feet, was a sight that made as shudder. It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones, from all parts of the huinan body, skeletons nearly entire rotting; clothing, human hair, and putnd flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luiuriantly. It emitted a sickening odor lib* that ot a dead horte, and it was here that the v ogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them, in the midst of the heap I could distinguish one slight skeleton form still enclosed in • chemise, the skull wrapped about in a colored handkerchief, and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered-footless stockings worn by the Bulgarian girls. The ground was strewed with bones in every direction, where the dogs had - carried them off to gnaw them at their leisure. - ■

MURDERED WOMEN AND CHILDREN. “At a distance of a hundred yards beneath us lay the town. There was not a root. left, not a whole wall, standing ; ,all whi a inass of ruins, from which arose as we listened a low plaintiff wail, like the ‘ keening’ of the Irish over their dead, that filled the little valley and gave it voice. We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and observed that they were all small, and- that< the aiticlessof clothing intermingled with them and Mag about were all parts of wooden's apparel. These then were all women and girlsf From my saddle I counted about a hundred not including those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly hesp, nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly all separated from the rent of the bones, the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded. ( X f - BEOKJEN-HBABTED AND HOMKLKB3WOMJSN. “ We disced© i nto the town. Within the shattered walls of the first house we to was a woman sitting on; a heap of rubbish* rocking herself too and fro,w ailing a kittd cf monotonous chant, half sung, Waft sobbed, that was nor without a wild discordant melody. In her lap she held a babe* and another child sat behide her patiently and silently, and looked at us as we passed with wondering eyes. She paid nu atteniSonto us ; but we bent our ear bo hear what sbo was saying, and our interpreter, said it was as follows n— ‘ My home, my home, my poor home, my sweet home; my husband* my husband, my poor husband,'my dear husband; my home, my sweet home i and so on, repeating the' same wtrds over and over again a thousand times. In the next house were two engaged in the same way: one old, the other young, repeating words nearly identical. ‘ I had § home, and now 1 have none; I had a husband, and now lam a wid«w; I bad a son, and now I have none; I had five children, and now I have none; ’ while rocking themselves to and fro, beating their heads, and wringing their 'hands. These were women who had escaped from the ma>sacie, and had only just returned for the first time, taking advantage of onr visit or that of Mr Baring to do so. As we advanced there were more and more; some sitting on the heaps of stones that covered the noon of their houses, others walking up and down before their doors, wringing their hy-ndq repeating the same despairing waiL There were few tears in this universal mourning. It was dry, hard, and despairing. As w» proceeded most of them fell iutohne b«Mnn us, and they -finally formed a procession of four or five hundred people, mostly women and children, wh» followed ns about .where ever we went with their mournfol cries.'”

He describes the heartrending grief of the childless and widowed women. He came to the ruins of a schoolhouse, beneath the stones and ashes of which were the bones and rubbish of 200 women and children, burnt alive within its walls. In a broad shallow pit close by 100 bodies had been buried, but the dogs had partly unearthed them. The water Sowed in, and converted the pit into a horrid cesspool. In a sawmill the wheel-pit was, choked with dead bjdies. and the hanks of the stream were* strewed with corpses sweltering in the sum and being eaten by dogs.

A HEAP OF THREE THOUSAND CORPSES, The churchyard was helped up five or six feet above the level of the street, but what appeared to be a mass of stones and rubbish was really au immense heap of human bodies covered with a thin layer of stouts. Tha stench became so horrible that it was impossible to approach the heap. Heads, arms, legs, feet, and hands projected from the heap in horrid confusion. 3 000 people lay in the little churchyard. The correspondent goes on to say : “It was a fearful sight—a sight to haunt ! one through life. Tnere were little curly i heads there in that festering mass, crushed down by heavy stones ; little feet not as Igng as your finger on which the flash WM

4ri*d hard by the ardent beat before it bad toim# to decompose; little baby hands stretched ja if for .help pTUV es that bad died jrbiideniig at the bright gleam of sabres and JpOed, of. the fierce-eyed, men who wielded them - tj children whobad i died Shrinking with fright, an,d ; young Bobbing and begging for mothers who died trying to shield ieir little ones with •11 lying there together, festering in one horrid mass. They are. silent enough now. Thereare no tears nor cries, no weep ng, •oshndkabf terror, or prayers for mercy. ** Of all the cruel* brntal, ferocious things Ihe Turks dveV did, the massacre of Batak is •ambfig* the yrorst! Of all 'the mad, foolish things they ever did, leaving these bodies to •fie hero rottihg for three months uuburied, iianprdbably the maddest and most foolish ! Bat thigi.tillage was in an isolated, ont-of-Ihe way place, difficult' of access, and theyj ; Europeans would go, poking! hthcdr. noses; here; so they, cynically said,j ThesffGhristians are not even worth burial,| the deig&'eat them.’ ” • • r j e FAMILIES | , The .correspondent questioned many of ,hf to hoW many were killed] family.' j In one family of. ten .two, re-! .j^ngß,(fp another three *.nt of in! another five out of One old v wQman[ who had three tall, handsome sons, all married, and with twelve beautiful children] between them; and this poor .old grand-; mother, alone remained, . There was pne old patriarch who had five sons married, with twenty live [children, and only eight remained alive. They-were all slaughtered tout these. and massacre of. 200 curls. ! 1’ •* We asked about the sknlls and bones ‘we'Md seen np on the hill upon first arriv- ! lag in the village where the dogs had barked at lit. These, we were told, were the bones «f ftbojdt pWo hundred young girls, who had firtt been ( ,captured and particularly reserved for]a worst fate than death. They had been kept (tilithe last; they had been , ; in the hapdsiof’their captors for several days—foi* the hjmring and the: pillaging had; not all Won ’ accomplished in & a'ngle day—and dftiing this time they bad Suffered all it was pdtßible'that poor, weak, l! girls at the bands of brutal SAvageS. Then,J when the towp had been pillaged andbpjmij when all their. friends had beep 1 these ppor young things, whose V«y o wrongs should have insured- theii ■apety, whose very outrages should have in-' ■Uted)th®sh protection, were taken, ift bruaii light, bf tday, beneath, the smiling canopy pf hwvfh, 'cboly then thrown in a httoAhfire, and left to rot: ” o r o Oh u WOMEN OUTRAGED ANp MURDERED. o“4- utile further on we pame to an object , that filled us with pity and horror. It °f a ydupg giR hot more n t£pn .nft|en, lying by the Roadside, and ... coverop with the debrU of a fallen It ( waa still clothed in a chemise; ' the ankles : were enclosed in footless stockbut ,the little feet, from whiofi. the ri nhoea had been taken, were naked, and, . owing to the iait that the flesh had'dried ifa(i, stead, pf Recomposing, were nearly perfect. o f : Thdre was a large gash in the skull, to which a mass of rich brown hair nearly a yard long' still clung, trailing in the dust, It is to be xiinimrked that aU tpp of women found here wferddfCaaed in a chemise only,' ftfeia - .poor, child had evidently been’ Stripped to her chemise, partly in J the search Jfcas. moneyyjand jewels, partly , out of mere, brutality,,;theft . outraged, and afterwards killed. We have talked with many women ' r ~ ] Vrfifoha'd phased through afl parte .of the drni last, and the procedure seems be'dh'as ’follows Jr-They would seize •■'iSromim,'"strip her carefully to her chemise, laying aside articles of clothing that weire vllituHfablel with>any ornaments or jewels she might ;haVe about her; then as; many of them, as, would violate hfcf; and the 'f TwiHanWould'kill her or ftot, as the humor nMlMf’,';-.■; '• v,, . ■Next ne was shown the body of a poor blind youth r , who had, been w> If ally burnt alive, and he goes on to describe ...TBEE MURDER OF INFANTS. - u On the otheif side of the way were the 1 skeletons of two children lying side by side, ■partlfy ( o6vere<i with stones, and with frightful sabre cuts in their- little skulls. The , .number, of children killed in these massacres is _ something 1 enormous. They were 5 often c Oft,-bayonets, and we have several stories' froin, eye-witnesses who saw- little ■ babes carried about the streets, both here r, daadftlt Olluk-kui, on the point of bayonets, erft The reason issitople. : Whep a Mahometan oi has killed/a.certain numW. of infidels he! iq Bttrb df Paradise, no matter Jwhat - his ,slns maybe. Mahomet probably intended r-tfiat r arified-tnen should count, bnt.' the ordi pis jutry• Mudsplihan takes r the precept in its broider Abceptation, and counts' women and V. cfiffdrdtt as well. The advantage of killing r. ;epidf?etf ; ia-that,it sm.be ! done without tlanger', aiid' that a child counts for as much as an armed man. Here in Batak the Bashi- / Bazqnks, in order to swell the count, ripped open pregnant women, and killed the unborn infants.” ' , ' ■ j ■ In calling upon the English nation to subscribe for the relief of the Bulgarians, the Bishop of Manchester Writes If wears , to have any regard for onr honor and our :> ■ good name, we should no longer throw or ' ;,, even allow it to be supposed, that we threw ;. ; the, shield'of protection of England over a power, which relying on that protection, has done deeds which have startled and shocked the conscience whole world,”