The _Bayern_ spent three days at Catania. During that time I made a trip of investigation to Syracuse. Here the refugees numbered only 3,000—one-eighth of the number at Catania; but 900 of these were hospital patients. Syracuse, too, has only one-seventh of Catania’s population. Its hospital accommodations at the time of the earthquake were for one hundred patients. If Syracuse had succeeded better than any other place in mastering the difficulties of the situation it was not because the difficulties were insignificant. Syracuse was fortunate in a Prefect and a Mayor of resource and capacity; in an unusually efficient body of volunteer workers, with one woman of great ability at their head; and in the fact that the importance of the work, as a moral and mental tonic for the refugees, was realized from the very beginning. Syracuse was the first place where refugees were set to work. The credit for this is due to an American, Miss Katherine Bennett Davis, head of the New York State Reformatory for Women. When Miss Davis first thought of employing refugee women to make clothes for the hospitals, relief work at Syracuse was just emerging from a state of chaos. Four hospitals had been equipped after a fashion for the reception of patients. The Municipal hospital was already in good running order, through the efforts of Signor Broggi-Reale, head of the local Red Cross; the Archbishop’s palace was being rapidly transformed into a second hospital by a number of ladies; at the big barracks conditions were more primitive until the arrival of a splendidly equipped expedition of the German Red Cross. Most of the hospitals were short of blankets; all needed sheets, and all were entirely unsupplied with clothes for the patients. Of the two thousand able-bodied refugees, eight hundred were maintained aboard the steamship _Nord Amerika_; the rest were scattered about the town. A woman’s branch of the Red Cross was being organized by the Marchesa di Rudini, whose activity covered every branch of the work of relief and extended beyond the confines of Syracuse, to all the towns of the province. Her position as wife of one of the largest landowners of the province and daughter-in-law of Italy’s lamented premier; her independence of any particular organization; her skill and tact in uniting individuals and parties made her the most influential person in Syracuse. To her is due more than to anyone else the excellent organization of the Syracuse relief work.