Bey's plans were complete, and the extermination of Armenians hundreds
of miles from any sphere of military operations rendered it needless to
say anything about it, or to invent instances of treachery if there were
actually none to hand.

Simultaneously the massacre of Armenians behind the Turkish lines
began. The whole male population of the district round Bitlis was
murdered, so too were all males in Bitlis itself. Then all women and
children were driven in, as a herdsman might drive sheep, from the
reeking villages round, and, for purposes of convenience, concentrated
in Bitlis. When they were all collected, they were driven in a flock to
the edge of the Tigris, shot, and the corpses were thrown into the
river. That was the solution of the Armenian question in Bitlis.

North-west of Bitlis, and some sixty miles distant, lies the town of
Mush. It used to contain about 25,000 Armenian inhabitants, and in the
district round there were some three hundred villages chiefly consisting
of Armenians. Arrangements were on foot for a general massacre there
when the arrival of Russian troops at Liz, some fifteen hours' march
away, caused the execution of it to be put off for a while, and up till
July a few folk only had been shot, and a few beaten to death, as a
warning to those treacherously inclined. Then the Russians, in the face
of superior forces, had to retire again, and the massacres were put on a
systematic footing. The account which follows is based on four
independent authorities: (1) The statement of a German eye-witness in
Mush in charge of an Armenian orphanage; (2) the statement of a woman
deported from a village near, and subsequently killed by Kurds; (3)
information from refugees escaped to Trans-Caucasia; (4) the journal
_Horizon_ of Tiflis. These supplement each other, often verify each
other, and in no instance are contradictory.