and Colonel Crombie; the first died of cholera in ten hours, and the latter after a lingering illness of dysentery; they were both in the Coldstreams. However, the disease is rapidly on the wane, and the men are recovering health and spirits fast. You have, of course, heard long ago that the enemy have crossed the Pruth, and that the Austrians and Turks are at Bucharest. The Russians have lost, since Silistria, 16,000 men from sickness and fighting. How will all this affect the campaign in the eyes of diplomatists? The Crimea seems to me now more than ever the point at which we ought to strike a sharp and decisive blow, and I firmly believe we are going to do it. In the meantime, we have received very bad news from Asia Minor, namely, that the right wing of the Turkish army has been almost annihilated and somewhere near Mount Ararat. They say Lord Raglan does not at all like the accounts he has received, but as yet the details have not reached us, and so many lies are abroad connected with every event that takes place in these parts that it would be idle telling you all the rumours one hears. Nasmyth, however, whom you have heard of at the siege of Silistria, has been sent by Lord Raglan to Batoum to get information. We like our new camp very much, but any spot would be preferable to the last, filled as it was with unpleasant associations. However, in the midst of all these serious moments, a circumstance occurred from which it was impossible to restrain a suppressed smile. The men as they died were sewn up in their blankets and carried on a stretcher to their graves, but from esprit de galanierie for the ladies — two of the men's wives having died — ^we made rough kinds of coffins for them. Materials for this were not easy to obtain, and we had to knock to pieces boxes that had brought beer, provisions, and stores to the camp, so that when one of the women's funerals moved off, there was the coffin carried on men's shoulders covered all over with " Bass's superior Pale Ale." It looked so Hke a trick in a pantomime, the outside being such a fearful
contrast to what was inside, that it was impossible not to smile.... — Ever, my dear William, your affectionate brother, Fredk. Stephenson.
To his Sister, Henrietta Maria Stephenson
Varna, August 24, 1854.
My dear Minny, — You have been such a good correspondent, and have been so constant in your writing, that it has often gone to my heart to let so many of your kind letters be laid aside unanswered, but when writing home I have always thought it best to write to my mother, because I know it gives her so much pleasure to hear from me, and because I know you see my letters when she has read them. However, I must break through the rule this time, if only to thank you for all your kind recollections of me. I have been all along and am still in first-rate health and spirits, and have as yet most fortunately escaped from the sickness which has sent so many of our poor fellows to their last account. My eyes have never even given me one thought, and as for my liver (to enter into home particulars) I have not yet been sensible of its existence. We have now moved our camp to about four miles south of Varna Bay, upon some fine high ground, with a charming view of the Black Sea. There is a beautiful gully full of trees leading down to the seashore where we constantly go to bathe, and where I delight in roaming about by myself, sitting at times upon the beach, watching the lovely sea with the bright Hght of an evening sun upon it and ruminating about home. We have had what the ancients would have thought a portentous omen lately, but which we attribute to a probable change of season. An enormous flight of some thousand storks flew over our camp some two days ago on their way to the South, and yesterday we were visited with swarms of locusts from the East; they filled the air for several hours during their flight, and it was a verj'^
1 854] MONOTONOUS LIFE 99