“Wednesday, March 9th: I don’t know how much longer I stay--if I see it through, it will be the first of May before I get away. I am terribly rushed as I have to get out a set of drawings for Queen Elena, of the houses we are to put up at her village. That is to say, I am arranging where they are to go. I took the Duca d’Ascoli, the Queen’s gentleman-in-waiting, over the land at the Villaggio Regina Elena yesterday. I am trying to get the drawings done for the Queen, and translating employment forms, and things happen every minute as well. I am well and happy and working like anything. The hotel is accepted. The Queen wants me to make designs for a schoolhouse for her; and I am trying to do it, but there are usually anywhere from two to four people in the chart-house, and I get my elbow poked just as I am almost successfully through an ink drawing. “U. S. S. ‘Celtic,’ March 11, 1909: It’s 8.45 A.M. Belknap went over to Reggio this morning at seven and doesn’t get back till lunch time, and I have a great stunt before me. Saturday we go out to live in our first batch of twelve houses, which are finished. The water supply comes from a mountain stream, away above where the town supply comes from. It has been analyzed by the doctor (who goes with us) and piped by the ‘Celtic’s’ plumber to the camp. The work that has been undertaken is simply immense. The houses are spotting themselves over the surface of the earth, like flies on sticky fly-paper, as thick and fast. Yesterday was a tremendous day; I had to get out the hotel plan for the engineer, to give our estimate of how much wire would be needed for electric lighting of it, and the Duca d’Ascoli took off at five o’clock a bundle of drawings for Queen Elena; and all the time I was being joggled and jostled by people coming in and out, and many of them staying in the chart-house. I cannot imagine where you got the idea of cold. I wrote a long time ago that I had never had occasion to wear my overcoat since I came down, and it’s been very much in the way in these cramped quarters. Bill o’ the Bilge’s rubber coat has been my greatest boon; though I have sweltered in it, it has kept me dry. Twice we have had dinner on the quarter-deck; we did last night. Captain Huse gave a dinner for the Duca d’Ascoli, the [Illustration: LT. COMMANDER BELKNAP PUTTING THE AMERICAN CAMP IN COMMISSION. _Page 247._] [Illustration: AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA. HAULING UP THE COLORS. _Page 247._] [Illustration: MESSINA. VIA I. SETTEMBRE.] [Illustration: PALMI. THE CATHEDRAL. _Page 158._]