The Cannock Chase Examiner. — 1876-11-24 (Cannock, Staffordshire, England)

LADY STRANGFORD'S EASTERN MISSION. The Lord Mayor of London has received a long letter fiom Lady Strangford, giving an account of her mission in the East. We give the following extracts :—"The Bulgarians had prepared a small but pleasant house for me, to which I was warmly welcomed, and where I was at once made as comfortably at home as possible. Nothing could exceed the kindness of my reception. The present misery is so appalling hero that it may well absorb me. It will be many years before the Bulgarian villages can be restored to the state they were hi last April. Rich and poor villages are alike utterly destroyed, and nothing scarcely is lobe seen but thousands of wretched, half-starved, shivering women and children, huddling under a few boards on the damp earth, among the blackened heaps of fallen walls. I went with a missionary to Betel'. We rode six hours in torrents of rain up the mountain gorge. The place, cleared now of human remains, is yet a dreadful eight; nothing but heaps of blackened and burnt stones. The people are living in huts of a few loose boards laid together, or in shanties of straw, through .vhich the wind and the rain passed freely. Mr. Clarke had got up at the cost of £250 a wooden building, for refuge arid hospital, in w loch we slept, with blankets bung up to keep out the rain, which dripped through the 111, finished roof, and the wind from the unglazed windows. We slept on sacks of straw. As I lay there sleepless and shivering with cold, I yet felt ashamed of the comparative comfort and warmth we were enjoying. In • a village where we were the Turks end Bulgarians live happily together, and there had been no disturbance, but eight men and boys of the village had been murdered on the road at some distance. I wise glad for once to see how evidence was gathered. Al the poor woman who had seen her son killed and another of the lads roasted on the fire rose to leave the room I said a few words of sympathy, and added cry regret at having made her repeat so sad a story. She turned round on me with tears dropping down her Yaikmak, and said, as she struck her breast with one hand. "The fire burns here, oh lady by day and by night; why should I not speak of its burning ? The pain is the same whether I speak or am . . But we want more and more money. Heaven knows how I feel for the privations of my own countrymen at home, and have seen something of suffering in England; but if the poorest end worst off English peasant could see for himself the state of the best off here in them villages, I think we should soon have funds enough and to spare. For myself, I am ashamed of the clothes I wear, and of the blankets I sleep under ; and the limd I eat chokes me when I thing of what I have seen around me. Christmas will come soon, and the English will be gladdening the hearts of their owe people in prosperous, happy England. Will they not spare something for Ike yet far poorer, suffering, sorromistrieken, crushed. down creatures here in this country, which is as cold and colder than any fell or moor at home? My Lord, I wish I could have written you abetter account of this country and my work in it ; but I can do no more now. I ean only beg you to ask the merchants of the City of London to send me ..E50,000. God knows how we need it here."