The first group consisted of old men, old women, and young children.  They, guarded by gendarmes, were sent marching through the desert to Deir-el-Zor.  Few, if any, ever arrived there, all dying by the way.

The second group, consisting of able-bodied men, was led off in batches and slaughtered.  Among them were Zohrab and Vartkes, Armenian deputies who had been brought there from Constantinople.

The third group consisted of young marriageable girls.  Some, perhaps, found their way into harems.

From Aleppo (one of the final concentration camps before such as were left of the convoys set forth for their goal, the swamps or the desert round Deir-el-Zor) we have the detailed evidence of Dr. Martin Niepage, High Grade teacher in the German Technical School.  This gentleman, with a courage and a humanity to which the highest tribute must be paid, addressed a report of protest to the German Ambassador at Constantinople, and wrote an open letter to the Reichstag on the subject of what he had seen with his own eyes in that town.  In his preliminary matter he speaks as follows:—­

’In dilapidated caravanserais I found quantities of dead, many corpses being half-decomposed, and others still living among them who were soon to breathe their last.  In other yards I found quantities of sick and dying people, whom nobody was looking after....  We teachers and our pupils had to pass them every day.  Every time we went out we saw through the open windows their pitiful forms, emaciated and wrapped in rags.  In the morning our school children, on their way through the narrow streets, had to push past the two-wheeled ox-carts on which every day, from eight to ten rigid corpses without coffin or shroud, were carried away, their arms and legs trailing out of the vehicle.’

From the report itself:—­

’Out of convoys which, when they left their homes on the Armenian plateau, numbered from two to three thousand men, women, and children, only two or three hundred survivors arrived here in the south.  The men were slaughtered on the way, the women and girls, with the exception of the old, the ugly and those who are still children, have been abused by Turkish soldiers and officers....  Even when they are fording rivers they do not allow those dying of thirst to drink.  All the nourishment they receive is a daily ration of a little meal sprinkled on their hands....  Opposite the German Technical School at Aleppo, a mass of about four hundred emaciated forms, the remnant of such convoys, is lying in one of the caravanserais.  There are about a hundred children (boys and girls) among them, from five to seven years old.  Most of them are suffering from typhoid and dysentery.  When one enters the yard, one has the impression of entering a madhouse.  If one brings food, one notices that they have forgotten how to eat....  If one gives them bread, they put it aside indifferently.  They just lie there quietly waiting for death.’