Anatolia, Asia Minor.
To Miss Clara Barton, President:
In speaking of the relief work in Asia Minor, may I be allowed to begin at Constantinople, at which place, while waiting for the necessary official papers for our work, we were all busy selecting and purchasing relief supplies, camping outfit, cooking utensils, and making other preparations for interior travel; and also securing competent interpreters and dragomans. Although the Irade of the Sultan granting permission to enter Asia Minor had not yet been received, we were naturally anxious to follow the first shipment of supplies purchased and sent by steamer to the port of Alexandretta as the safest route, to be forwarded again by camels under guard to different places in the interior; and with our own men to accompany and attend the work of distribution. Accordingly, accompanied by interpreter Mason, I left Constantinople on the tenth of March, touching at Smyrna, Latakea, Mersina and Tripoli, reaching Alexandretta on the eighteenth, and by the kind help of our Consular Agent, Mr. Daniel Walker, and Mr. John Falanga, began making up the caravans for shipment to Aintab, as a central point for the southern field.
By the time the caravans were ready and horses for travel selected, Mr. Wistar and Mr. Wood, with dragomans, arrived by steamer from Constantinople. Rev. Dr. Fuller, president of the Aintab (American) College, had also just come through with friends from Aintab to take steamer, himself to return again immediately, and together we all set out under soldier escort the next morning. Alexandretta was in a state of fear while we were there, notwithstanding the fact that the warships of England, France, Turkey, and the United States lay in her harbor. Kirk Khan, the first stopping place on our journey inland, was threatened with plunder and destruction on the night before our arrival there. At Killis we found the town in a state of fear from the recent massacres. Here, with Dr. Fuller, we visited the wounded who were under the good care of a young physician just from the college at Aintab, but without medicine, surgical dressings and appliances. These with other needed things we arranged to send back to him from the supplies that had gone ahead.
Aintab, with its American school, college, seminary and hospital buildings standing out in relief and contrast from the native buildings, was a welcome reminder of home; and the greeting of the hundreds of pupils as they came hurrying down the road to welcome back their own loved president, became a welcome for the Red Cross. We were most cordially offered the hospitality of Dr. Fuller’s house and home, but as we were still strangers in a strange land, it seemed best to place ourselves in a khan, where we could have better opportunity to make an acquaintance with the people to obtain the varied information necessary to accomplish best results in the disposition of our relief. Here we remained long enough to learn the needs of the place and surrounding country, to obtain carefully prepared lists of those artisans needing tools and implements for their various trades and callings. Supplies were left, clothing, new goods for working up, thread, needles, thimbles, medicines, and surgical stores.
Aintab is favored with its Mission Hospital; with its surgeon and physician, Dr. Shepard and Dr. Hamilton, and a strong American colony of missionary teachers, besides the Franciscan Brothers, who are doing excellent select work. The Father Superior was killed near Zeitoun. Supplies were selected and made up for Oorfa, Aintab, Marash and other points, while a quantity of supplies, by the kindness of Dr. Fuller, was left in storage in the college building to be forwarded as our inquiries should discover the need. To Oorfa, where the industrial work had been so successfully established by Miss Shattuck, we sent material and implements for working, needles, thread, thimbles, cotton and woolen goods for making up. To Marash and Zeitoun, ready-made goods in addition to new, with surgical appliances and medicines.
From Aintab, Mr. Wood and Mr. Wistar started by way of the most distressed points needing help eastward, and then north to Harpoot; and because of your telegram of the report of typhus and dysentery at Marash and Zeitoun, we started in that direction, with Rev. L.O. Lee, who was returning home. After facing rain, snow and mud for three days we came to Marash. Here we remained until our caravan of goods came on. Typhus, dysentery and smallpox were spreading as a result of the crowded state of the city; Marash had been filled with refugees since the November massacres, notwithstanding a large part of its own dwelling houses had been burned and plundered. The surrounding country had also been pillaged, people killed and villages destroyed, and the frightened remnant of people had crowded in here for protection, and up to this time had feared to return. With insufficient drainage and warm weather coming on, typhus, dysentery and smallpox already in the prisons, an epidemic was becoming general. True, the preachers requested mothers not to bring children with smallpox to church, nevertheless the typhus and smallpox spread, and rendered medical supervision a necessity. By the efforts of Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Macallum, wives of the missionaries of the Marash station, a hospital had been established with plenty of patients, but they had no funds for physicians or medicines. Medicines were left and funds furnished for a native doctor educated in America (who himself had just recovered from typhus) and was placed in charge of the hospital and out-of-door service, and was doing efficient work before we left Marash. Arrangements were made with Rev. Mr. Macallum to have tools and implements made and distributed to artisans and villagers; and we left with him to begin this work the sum which you had sent for our own use 500 lire—$23,000.
By this time Dr. Ira Harris, whom you had called from Tripoli, Syria, with his assistants, arrived for the Zeitoun field. Dr. Harris had his well-filled medical chests and surgical supplies in a mule caravan, and being more needed at other places, we left immediately for Adioman via Besnia, passing through Bazarjik and Kumaklejercle, a three days’ mountain journey. Our officer kindly told us, when we stopped at a Kourdish village for the night, to “order what we want and not pay if we do not want to.” But we made it clear to him, that while we are not extravagant in our wants, we always pay for what we take. It is customary in this country for villages to entertain soldiers free of charge. At Bazarjik when we inquired concerning the health of the place, an official said they had no sickness except a few cases of smallpox, and this was confined to children—that his little girl had it, and she was brought in as a proof.
Besnia was saved from pillage and massacre by the efforts of Pasha Youcab, Osman Zade, Mahund Bey, and several other Turkish Beys, but the surrounding villages were attacked and suffered more or less severely. Some of the women escaped and found protection in Besnia, where they were still living. We did some medical work here and left, in good hands, a moderate sum for emergencies. Our reception by the officials at Besnia, as indeed at every place we have been, large or small, was most cordial and friendly. With only an exception or two, no more considerate treatment could have been expected or asked from any people. Before reaching the city we had heard that there was a feudal war in progress ahead of us, and when the military commander learned that we were intending to go to Adioman, he interposed, saying he could take no responsibility in sending us there; that he had just sent a hundred soldiers out on that road to quell a riot; that it was dangerous, but he would give us a good officer and soldiers for another road to Malatia. This we accepted and four days more of mountain travel, via Paverly, Soorgoo, and Guzena, brought us to the fruit and garden city of Malatia, which formerly had a population of 45,000. It is reported that about 1500 houses were plundered and 375 were burned, and some thousands of persons killed. The people of all classes were still in fear.
A sum of money from friends in America had been sent by the missionaries, but its distribution had been delayed several weeks through some formality in the post-office, and was but just being made the day we arrived. We left here a sum for special cases and typhus patients, and with a promise to return, pressed on to our objective point, two days’ journey more across the Euphrates at Isli to Harpoot, when the limit of our time would be out for meeting the second expedition which arrived only two hours ahead of us. Here the people turned out en masse to welcome the Red Cross; the road was lined, the streets and windows filled, and house roofs covered, and all had words of welcome on their lips. We were told by the Rev. Dr. Wheeler, the founder of the Mission and American College of Central Turkey, that we were the second party of Americans, not missionaries, that they had seen in Harpoot in forty years. We were most cordially met by the mission people. Although they, too, had been plundered, and most of their buildings and their homes had gone in the flames, we were offered, most kindly, the shelter of the remaining roofs and seats at their table as long as we would stay.