Mavroyeni Bey to Mr. Gresham.

[Translation.]

Mr. Secretary of State: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s note of the 8th instant and to communicate to you the substance of a dispatch I have just received from His Excellency Said Pasha, according to which the visit of the American squadron in Ottoman waters can naturally only be considered by the Sublime Porte in the same light as those which the ships of war of the other [Page 1251] Powers are in the habit of making annually to Ottoman ports. His excellency adds that the fears of want of security alleged by some American citizens have no foundation in fact, and that these groundless fears are the work of those who are endeavoring, for certain subversive objects, to show to the world an abnormal situation which does not exist in reality.

Please accept, etc.,

Mavroyeni.