TO MISS CLARA BARTON, _President_: In speaking of the relief work in Asia Minor, may I be allowed to begin at Constantinople, at which place, while waiting for the necessary official papers for our work, we were all busy selecting and purchasing relief supplies, camping outfit, cooking utensils, and making other preparations for interior travel; and also securing competent interpreters and dragomans. Although the _Irade_ of the Sultan granting permission to enter Asia Minor had not yet been received, we were naturally anxious to follow the first shipment of supplies purchased and sent by steamer to the port of Alexandretta as the safest route, to be forwarded again by camels under guard to different places in the interior; and with our own men to accompany and attend the work of distribution. Accordingly, accompanied by interpreter Mason, I left Constantinople on the tenth of March, touching at Smyrna, Latakea, Mersina and Tripoli, reaching Alexandretta on the eighteenth, and by the kind help of our Consular Agent, Mr. Daniel Walker, and Mr. John Falanga, began making up the caravans for shipment to Aintab, as a central point for the southern field. By the time the caravans were ready and horses for travel selected, Mr. Wistar and Mr. Wood, with dragomans, arrived by steamer from Constantinople. Rev. Dr. Fuller, president of the Aintab (American) College, had also just come through with friends from Aintab to take steamer, himself to return again immediately, and together we all set out under soldier escort the next morning. Alexandretta was in a state of fear while we were there, notwithstanding the fact that the warships of England, France, Turkey, and the United States lay in her harbor. Kirk Khan, the first stopping place on our journey inland, was threatened with plunder and destruction on the night before our arrival there. At Killis we found the town in a state of fear from the recent massacres. Here, with Dr. Fuller, we visited the wounded who were under the good care of a young physician just from the college at Aintab, but without medicine, surgical dressings and appliances. These with other needed things we arranged to send back to him from the supplies that had gone ahead.