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Bredimacian Dynagum Directory 06
Page 10
In the old warfare a man was either stabbed, shot, or thrust through after an hour or so of excitement, and all the wounded on the field were either comfortably murdered or attended to before the dawn of the next day. One was killed by human hands, with understandable and tolerable injuries. But in this war the bulk of the dead--of the western Allies, at any rate--have been killed by machinery, the wounds have been often of an inconceivable horribleness, and the fate of the wounded has been more frightful than was ever the plight of wounded in the hands of victorious savages. For days multitudes of men have been left mangled, half buried in mud and filth, or soaked with water, or frozen, crying, raving between the contending trenches. The number of men that the war, without actual physical wounds, has shattered mentally and driven insane because of its noise, its stresses, its strange unnaturalness, is enormous. Horror in this war has overcome more men than did all the arrows of Cressy.
Immediately after war was declared between Germany and Russia the Porte ordered the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles closed to every kind of shipping, at the same time barring the entrances of these channels with rows of mines. The first boat to suffer from this measure was a British merchantman, which was sunk outside the Bosphorus, while another had a narrow escape in the Dardanelles. A large number of steamers of every nationality are waiting outside the straits for the special pilot boats of the Turkish Government, in order to pass in safety through the dangerous mine field. This measure of closing the straits was suggested to Turkey by Austria and Germany, and was primarily intended against Russia, as it was feared that her Black Sea fleet might force its way into the Sea of Marmora and the Aegean.
On January 14th we went over the whirlpool of Marques, a most picturesque sight. On the banks of the river was plenty of rubber, _hevea_, but not of quite such good quality as that found in Brazil. Some of the trees exuded white and some yellow latex, the coloration being probably due to the quality of the soil. There were few habitations along the banks of the Pachitea River. There were tribes of the Campas (or Antis) and Cashibos Indians, the members of both races having marked Malay characteristics. Occasionally one met extraordinary people in those out-of-the-way regions. When we halted for wood, which we used instead of coal for our engine, a man some six feet four inches in height came on board--quite an extraordinary-looking person. To my amazement, when I spoke to him, he turned out to be a man of refined taste and quite highly educated. He was a Hungarian count and an officer in the Austrian army, who, having got into trouble in his own country, had gone to settle there.
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