They move so rapidly that it’s breathless business trying to follow them. The work planned was roughly this: To build at Messina a village of a thousand houses with the necessary public buildings, hospitals, schools, church and hotel. The hotel was of vital importance. One of the worst features of the disaster was the fact that the brains of Messina had been practically wiped out. The people saved were largely of the working class, who are up early in the morning and who live in small houses. The great palaces of the rich proved fatal death-traps to most of them. The few business men of sense and energy left to cope with that unheard-of chaos had no place to sleep or eat at Messina. They were forced to live at Catania or Taormina, thus losing many precious hours on the long railroad journeys back and forth. Reggio, from the first the more fortunate of the two stricken cities, soon had a decent hotel lighted with electric light--a thing never before known in the ancient city the Romans called Rhegium, and Hugh, the Yeoman, spoke of as Riggio--but Reggio had Captain Cagni! Besides the village at Messina, the Americans had agreed to build a hospital and about one hundred houses at the Villaggio Regina Elena, a charming suburb on the other side of Messina, built by Queen Elena. At Reggio, another American village of one thousand houses was to be put up; on the Calabrian coast, in what is called the Palmi district, between Reggio and Scylla, five hundred houses were to be erected; and in the country between Taormina and Messina three hundred more, these last to be placed according to the advice of Messrs. Bowdoin and Wood, who ought to be classed with San Pancrazio, the patron saint thereabouts. These gentlemen had, and richly deserved to have, the forty-nine portable houses for their protégés. There is an impression at home that a far larger number of these admirable portable houses were sent than was the case. There were only forty-nine in all, sent by Massachusetts, who also contributed material for three hundred houses and much else besides. The village in the Valley of the Mosella was [Illustration: MESSINA. THE TORRENTE ZAERA. _Page 241._] to be laid out in regular street blocks like any modern suburban district in America, each block to contain twelve houses. Belknap’s plan was to finish the first twelve houses, a kitchen and an ice-house, and as soon as possible take possession of them and establish the party in camp. In the corner of the central square the ice-house was dug and roofed over, and here they stored thirty tons of ice and provisions from the “Celtic,” enough to last three weeks. There was great rejoicing the day the water was put in. There was a shower bath in Buchanan’s house, running water in the kitchen sink and men’s washroom, and an outside faucet for general use. The waste water was led by a wooden pipe to the Torrente Zaera.