"For the better part of six months, from April to October 1915, practically all the highways in Asia Minor were crowded with these unearthly bands of exiles. As far as can be ascertained, about 1,200,000 people started on this journey to the Syrian desert.... The gendarmes whom the government had sent, supposedly to protect the exiles, in a very few hours became their tormentors. They followed their charges with fixed bayonets, prodding any one who showed any tendency to slacken the pace. . . . They even prodded pregnant women with bayonets.... Detachements of gendarmes would go ahead notifying the Kurdish tribes that their victims were approaching and Turkish peasants were also informed that their long waited opportunity had arrived. The Government even opened the prisons and set free the convicts, on the understanding that they should behave like good Moslems to the approaching Armenians. Thus every caravan had a continuous battle for existence with several classes of enemies. . . . The men who might have defended these wayfarers had nearly all been killed or forced into the army as workmen, and the exiles themselves had been systematically deprived of all weapons before the journey began."