The conditions inside the crowded yards grew steadily worse. Dysentery
was rife, and the deaths from it in that narrow space averaged thirty a
day. The state of the sufferers grew so terrible that it was difficult
to get any one to look after them at all, and many were lying in the
open yards, and the weather, which hitherto had been warm, got cold, and
snow fell. It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be
obtained for those in health, and that of a kind utterly unsuitable to
the sick, while in the minds of their nurses was the bitter knowledge
that with proper diet hundreds of lives could have been saved, and
hundreds of cases of illness avoided.

For the dead there was but a small percentage of coffins available, and
'the great mass are just dropped into the great trench of rotting
humanity (in the yard). As I stand at my window I see one after another
of the little bodies carried by ... and the condition of the living is
more pitiful than that of the dead--hungry, ragged, dirty, sick, cold,
wet, swarming with vermin. Not for all the wealth of all the rulers of
Europe would I bear for one hour their responsibility for the suffering
and misery of this one little corner of the world alone. A helpless
unarmed Christian community turned over to the sword and the passion of
Islam!'

On the top of this came an epidemic of typhoid, twenty-seven cases on
the first day. Outside in the town the Turkish Consul began hanging
Christians, and the missioners were allowed to take the bodies and bury
them. There were threats that the mission would be entered, and all
young men (possible combatants) killed, but this fear was not realised.
The typhoid increased, and the doctor of the mission and others of the
staff fell ill with it; but the patience and service of the remainder