We looked into the church which had been blackened by the burning of the woodwork, but not destroyed, nor even much injured. It was a low building with a low roof, supported by heavy irregular arches, that as we looked in seemed scarcely high enough for a tall man to stand under. What we saw there was too frightful for more than a hasty glance.
An immense number of bodies had been partly burnt there and the charred and blackened remains, that seemed to fill it half way up to the low dark arches and make them lower and darker still, were lying in a state of putrefaction too frightful to look upon. I had never imagined anything so horrible. We all turned away sick and faint, and staggered out of the fearful pest house glad to get into the street again.
Skeletons of men
We walked about the place and saw the same things repeated over and over a hundred times. Skeletons of men with the clothing and flesh still hanging to and rotting together ; skulls of women, with the hair dragging in the dust, bones of children and of infants everywhere. Here they show us a house where twenty people were burned alive ; there another where a dozen girls had taken refuge, and been slaughtered to the last one, as their bones amply testified. Everywhere horrors upon horrors Istanbul Private Tours.
There were no dogs in the place, as they had all been driven away when the inhabitants began to return, and only hung around the outskirts of the village; but I saw one or two cats, fat and sleek, that sat complacently upon the walls and watched us with sleepy eyes.
It may be asked why the people who are in the village now do not bury these skeletons and these bones, instead of allowing them to be gnawed by the dogs and cats. Some of those who have been able to identify the bones of friends have made weak attempts at burying them. But they have no spades to dig graves with, and they are weak and starving.
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