Appreciating and regretting this disappointment, we must remind our anxious readers and friends--for such they are--that we have never been required to do this; that all conclusions to that effect are simply inferential, and all such expectations were born of anxious hope. But that which we feel _does_ immediately concern us, and comes directly within our province, is, to state that notwithstanding all that has been done through all sources, infinitely more remains to be done by some one; and while speculation upon the moral duty of nations, the rights or wrongs of governments, the problem of whether one ruler or another shall sit upon a throne for the next six months; what expressions of individual principle in regard to certain actions should be given; the proper stand for a people to take and maintain on high moral and religious questions--all important subjects--none value them more than I--all marking the high tone and progressive spirit of the most advanced stage of human thought and culture the world has yet known, it would seem that each and all of these, imperative and important as they are, admit of at least a little moment of time for consideration, and will probably take it whether admitted or not. But the facts are, that between the Archipelago and the Caspian Seas, the Black and the Mediterranean, are to-day living a million and a half of people of the Armenian race, existing under the ordinances of, at least, semi-civilization, and professing the religion of Jesus Christ; that according to the stated estimate of intelligent and impartial observers of various countries and concurred in by our own agents, whose observations have been unrestricted, from 100,000 to 200,000 of these persons, men, women and children, are destitute of shelter, raiment, fire, food, medicines, the comforts that tend to make human life preservable, or any means of obtaining them, save through the charitable beneficence of the world. [Illustration: REV. C.F. GATES, D.D. HARPOOT.] [Illustration: MISS CAROLINE E. BUSH HARPOOT.] [Illustration: FIRST EXPEDITION EMBARKING ON FERRY BOAT, EUPHRATES RIVER.] The same estimates concur in the statement, that without such outside support, at least 50,000 of these persons will have died of starvation or perished through accumulated hardship, before the first of May, 1897. [Illustration: A TURKISH TESKERE OR PASSPORT.] That even now it is cold in their mountain recesses, the frosts are whitening the rocky crests, trodden by their wandering feet, and long before Christmas the friendly snow will have commenced to cover their graves. These facts, bare and grim, are what I have to present to the American people; and if it should be proposed to make any use of them there is not much time for consideration. We have hastened, without loss of a day, to bring them plainly and truthfully before the public as a subject pertaining peculiarly to it.