Every kind of
vehicle that you could imagine--ox carts, buffalo wagons, Red Cross
carts, troikas, foorgans like prairie schooners, hay-wagons, Russian
phaetons and many others invented and fitted up for the occasion. The
animals--donkeys, horses, buffaloes, oxen, cows with their calves,
mules and herds of thousands of sheep and goats."
All through the day they moved on, at the end of the procession--Dr.
Shedd, planning out how he could best get his people safely away from
the Turks who--he knew--would soon come pursuing them down the plain
to the mountains. Night fell and they were in a long line of wagons
close to a narrow bridge built by the Russians across the Baranduz
river. They had come some eighteen miles from Urumia.
So they lay down in the wagons to try to sleep. But they could not and
at two o'clock in the night they moved on, crossed the river and drove
on for hour after hour toward the mountains that rose in a wall before
them.
The poor horses were not strong so the wagon had to be lightened.
Assyrian boys took loads on their heads and trudged up the rocky
mountain road while the wagon jolted and groaned as it bumped its way
along. The trail of the mountain pass was littered with samovars (tea
urns), copper kettles, carpets, bedding; and here and there the body
of someone who had died on the way.
Pages:
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247