Between Messina and the mountain town of Taormina, thirty miles to the South, lies a chain of towns and villages which were destroyed by the earthquake. At Taormina, when the earthquake occurred, were two young Americans—Harry Bowdoin and Charles King Wood. Mr. Bowdoin was spending the winter in Taormina with his invalid mother and Mr. Wood is an artist who has lived in Taormina for several years. These men entered with the utmost zeal upon the work of relief. Taormina was not injured, but it lay close to the edge of the zone of destruction and many hundreds of fleeing victims sought refuge there. Others in Taormina also participated actively in relief work, but gradually Messrs. Bowdoin and Wood came to be recognized as the leaders. Afterwards, by common consent, these two young men became representatives of the American Committee in the small towns between Messina and Taormina. Day and night they went up and down the coast and back among the mountain communes, carrying comfort and good cheer. They organized local Committees in every community, gathering relief from the points of distribution at Messina and Catania and conveyed it to these local Committees. Without compensation and with a modesty which shrank from any words of commendation, these Americans performed a laborious and delicate task in a manner to stir the pride of their fellow countrymen. _Difficulties of Obtaining Information._ In attempting to secure reliable information of the methods and extent of relief measures in the earthquake zone, I found an obliging readiness on the part of those in charge at any given point to give me all the facts desired concerning their own respective agencies and a somewhat surprising ignorance of the operations in the same field of any other relief agencies. This in part arose from a deplorable lack of co-operation among the different agencies engaged in relief work and perhaps in part from a spirit of competition and pride which led each representative to desire to have it appear that the agency which he served was the chief factor in the situation. This may be illustrated by an incident which occurred one day when I was visiting the town of Villa San Giovanni. [Illustration: PRINCE CHIGI OF REHABILITATION COMMITTEE DISTRIBUTING SEWING MACHINES.]