Amongst the many offices of friendship and good-fellowship which their superiority in numbers enabled the French to render us during the winter, none was of more value or more highly appreciated than the assistance afforded by them in conveying our sick to Balaklava. Decimated as was the British army by disease, worn out by fatigue and privation, and occupying a position to whose enormous extent their diminished numbers were daily becoming more and more inadequate, the exigencies of the siege, and the still more pressing necessity of supplying hour by hour " all life needs for life," taxed their overstrained energies to the utmost, and left but a small margin of available means for the transport of the sick, who at times accumulated in the field-hospitals in a proportion which bade fair to outnumber their still healthy comrades. In this trying conjuncture our warm-hearted Allies came to the rescue, and for many weeks long trains of their mules, bearing the simple, but ingenious and most useful, litters which they employ in this service, were to be seen wending their way from the front to Balaklava, conducted by French soldiers, and under the charge of one of their officers. As this melancholy convoy neared the point of embarkation, which was at a wharf at the head of the harbour, above the shipping, and which, from the purpose to which it was destined, was known as the " Sick Wharf," mounted orderhes cleared the ever-crowded road, and secured a free and safe passage to the boats for the unfortunate sufferers. This wharf, which presented an original and happy combination of sanitary reform and engineering skill, was the conception of the able and energetic Commandant of Balaklava, Colonel Harding, who employed for its foundation the vast quantities of tilth and rubbish which were carried away from the dirty little town by his orders.
At this point the invalids were received by the Naval Officer in charge of the pier, and placed in the small boats which were to convey them to the ships destined to carry them to Scutari. So rapidly and well was the whole duty performed, that the writer has seen more than one hundred sick men brought down to the wharf, removed from the litters, and all of them embarked.
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
'*"
;Jfl
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
"«
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
cfl
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
in in less than half an hour. Too many of them, alas! only entered the fatal walls of the hospital at Scutari to be carried out ere long on other stretchers to the crowded burial-ground; and it was in gazing on these pale faces and emaciated forms, and reflecting on their too probable destination, more, perhaps, even than in the contemplation of the complicated carnage and mutilation of a field of battle, that the conviction of the appalling horrors of a state of war was fully brought home to the heart and conscience.