"Including refugees from Turkey and the Armenians, there were in Urmia, at the beginning of 1915, not far from 85,000 Christians. The Syrians or Nestorians include not only members of the old Nestorian Church but also Protestant members of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Roman Catholics or Chaldeans, as the last are generally called.... The Salamas Christians (except about 800), most of the Christians of Tabriz, and eight or ten thousand from Urmia fled with the retreating Russians. They left on the shortest notice, without preparation and in the heart of winter. Many perished by the way, mothers dying in childbirth, old men and women and little children falling by the wayside from exhaustion. This fleeing army ofrefugees, increased in numbers by several thousand from the regions in Turkey between Khoi and Van, passed over the Russian border and scattered in the villages and towns of Trans-Caucasia. Many of them died of disease due to the privations and exposures of flight and life as refugees"