26 July 1867: The barbarity of warfare is forcing women and children to escape Crete across the sea In a letter dated “Platania (skirts of Mount Ida),Crete, June 19, and ” a correspondent of the Daily News says:—
During the three weeks I have been in this island I have seen something of war,and much of its distresses. The entire country is at the present time bristling with arms from close to close, every man you meet being weaponed to the teeth, and including every age from boyhood to senility. There is too much reason for this,as wherever you turn in the more accessible districts, the eye is constantly revolted by the spectacle of devastated villages, or the blackened walls of roofless cottages “glooming” through the profuse foliage of the season,and attesting (with other outrages worse, but too well accredited to doubt) a barbarity of warfare on the part of the Ottomans such as we were wont to consider as characterising the fifteenth century rather than the present.
A portion of the women and children still hang round their ruined homesteads, and but the greater part,forced by starvation or frightened by the enemy’s violence, have resorted, and are yet resorting,in multitudes to the seacoast, both north and south (though mainly the latter), or where,peopling every tenantable headland, they await some blessed barque to carry them to a safer, and happier land. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com