We gave the city of Mosul a very wide berth, for that is the largest city of those parts, with a very large Turkish garrison.  Twenty miles to the north of it we captured a good convoy of mules, together with their drivers, headed toward Mosul, and the mules’ loads turned out to consist of good things to eat, including butter in large quantities.  We came on them in the gathering dusk, when their escort of fifty Turkish infantry had piled arms, we being totally unexpected.  So we captured the fifty rifles as well as the mules; and, although the mule-drivers gave us the slip next day, and no doubt gave information about us in Mosul, that did not worry us much.  We cut two telegraph wires leading toward Mosul that same night; we cut out two miles of wire in sections, riding away with it, and burned the poles.

After that, whenever we could catch a small party of men, Turks excepted (for that would have been to give the Turks more information than we could expect to get from them), Ranjoor Singh would ask questions about Wassmuss.  Most of them would glance toward the mountains at mention of his name, but few had much to tell about him.  However, bit by bit, our knowledge of his doings and his whereabouts kept growing, and we rode forward, ever toward the mountains now, wasting no time and plundering no more than expedient.

We saw no more living Armenians on all that long journey.  The Turks and Kurds had exterminated them!  We rode by burned villages, and through villages that once had been half-Armenian.  The non-Armenian houses would all be standing, like to burst apart with plunder, but every single one that had sheltered an Armenian family would lie in ruins.  God knows why!  On all our way we found no man who could tell us what those people had done to deserve such hatred.  We asked, but none could tell us.

One town, through which we rode at full gallop, had Armenian bodies still lying in the streets, some of them half-burned, and there were Kurds and Turks busy plundering the houses.  Some of them came out to fire at us, but failed to do us any harm, and, the wind being the right way, we set a light to a dozen houses at the eastward end.  Two or three miles away we stopped to watch the whole town go up in flames, and laughed long at the Turks’ efforts to save their loot.

As we drew near enough to the mountains to see snow and to make out the lie of the different ranges, we ceased to have any fear of pursuit.  There was plenty of evidence of Turkish armies not very far away; in fact, at Mosul there was gathering a very great army indeed; but they were all so busy killing and torturing and hunting down Armenians that they seemed to have no time for duty on that part of the frontier.  Perhaps that was why the Germans had sent Wassmuss, in order that the Turks might have more leisure to destroy their enemies at home!  Who knows?  There are many things about this great war to which none know the answer, and I think the fate of the Armenians is one of them.