Communications.
As will be seen, the sending of a letter from Constantinople to the interior, requires at the best six weeks, or forty-six days with no delays.
Only the large and more important towns have telegraphic communication. This requires two, three, four days of a week, according to circumstances. These dispatches are all sent and must be answered in Turkish.
Head of Turkish Telegraph Blank.
[Translation of above Telegram.]
Arabker, May 17, 1896.
Miss Barton:
Since three days we are attending with our doctors and their attendants to one hundred sick per day. The contagious fever (typhus) is diminishing. Miss Bush and all the party are distributing clothing and bedding. Lemme is giving implements and seed to the farmers. The needs here are extreme. Wistar’s party are at Pyre. Wood with his party are working in the district of Palou.
HUBBELL.
The larger towns have mails usually leaving once a week, carried on horses with a military guard. No newspaper is published in Asia Minor.
The missionary stations, with but two or three exceptions, are not near the seacoast, but from three to fifteen days’ travel from either the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, or three to twenty-five days to the nearest Mediterranean port. As will be seen by reference to the map the following stations are on the seaboard: Trebizond on the Black Sea; Smyrna and a small station near Merisine on the Mediterranean, and Constantinople on the Bosporus.
The following are inland and during several months in the winter and spring must be nearly, if not quite, inaccessible to outside approach: Adabazar, Bardezag, Brousa, Cesarea, Marsovan, Hadjin, Tarsus, Adana, Mardin, Aintab, Marash, Sivas, Harpoot, Oorfa, Erzingan, Erzroom, Van, Bitlis.