This, however, did not impede the work of the distribution of the relief fund as the money was sent to W. W. Peet, Constantinople, to be distributed by Rev. H. O. Dwight "with special reference to sufferers in the neighborhood of Van." The whole country was in fearful peril and Van itself practically in a state of siege, the trees along the streets having been leveled to permit the placing of cannon in position to command the Armenian quarter. A most various phase of the condition was wholesale exile. Thousands of Armenian villagers, unable to endure privation longer, or to see their wives and children starve left their ruined homes and bare fields and poured into the neighboring cities, unsheltered and hungry. Meanwhile the good work that the missionaries were doing at Van and Bitlis led the Duke of Westminster, Chairman of the British Committee of Relief, and Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, to designate Messrs. Raynolds and Cole as almoners of their bounty as they were of the gifts from America. When these gentlemen first reached the desolated region they were greatly hindered in caring for the poor by petty officials, but later on and in view of representations made by the embassies, the opposition ceased, at least outwardly. Men were set at work rebuilding houses and food was distributed to the most needy. It was estimated that $40,000 would be needed to feed upwards of five thousand persons until the next harvest, and a call was sent for further aid from Europe and America. Finally the bitter hate of the Turkish officials prevailed and the distribution of supplies was stopped and Messrs. Cole and Raynolds compelled to return to their homes. There were one hundred thousand persons in the two hundred towns and villages in one district alone, who were actually starving, and the story of one was the story of all sections. No one not in the actual midst of it could have any comprehension of the extent of the desolation and of the degree of the suffering. Daily rations of bread, amounting to two cents for adults and one cent for children, were delivered to more than one thousand six hundred in one city. Over four thousand suits consisting of shirt and drawers, were made and distributed, three hundred mattresses and four hundred quilts were given. Many were glad of a piece of bagging to put over them. Poor Armenia! Drenched with the blood of her children, her hills and valleys resounding with their shrieks and sighs and moans, she stood the oldest Christian nation in the world--asking for the smallest of small coins to preserve lives that might yet be given the crown of martyrdom--a spectacle for the world.