That passage to Scutari is as one of the wildest nightmares which ever disturbed an excited brain. Numbers sank on the passage, and many died afterwards from its After the establishment of the siege, hospital waggons and " cacolets," or mule litters, conveyed patients to Balaklava, where they were shipped for the England. When the land transport corps was fully organized, the road to the front finished, and the splendid line of steamers established between the Crimea and the Bosphorus, a transport service existed, such as, I suppose, was never before seen in the history of war; but before this perfection was attained, -much suffering had been undergone, and many deaths had been occasioned. The Out of 1,300 embarked at Old Fort, 51 died during the short passage to the Bosphorus. The ambulances were so constructed as to carry some men sitting, and others on stretchers. The mule litters also could be made to convey patients in either position. nitty roads, and fmil ships t' the first now. with many nt' the earlier miseries of' the almost forgotten and unknown. Even at the best of times, all who have watched the effects of the transport, will, I think, acknowledge the malignant influence it directly and su!>se<piently exerted <n the wounded, g from camp to port, the hoist in jin and out of ship, the close air of the hold, the irregular feeding, the sea-sickness, the decreased attention to. and the thousand ami one hardships to a man, of conveyance ly land and sea all combined to influence the wounded most It was well if the patient escaped the deadly typhus which lurked in these ships, and which liroiiirht death to many who embarked in comparative illegible in the scan of the first
87 and 1 7 engendered by the accidents of the passage, and it was liu-ky if gangivm' did not ensue, and amputation follow. The French ascribed much of the gangrene which reigned in their hospitals at Constantinople, to the early transference of their wounded from the camp, a measure which was adopted by them, in order to maintain the morale of the soldiers. Not a few of our men sank under the trial of the voyage, and lie buried beneath the restless waves of the Euxine, while to stand, as I have often done, on the pier at Scutari, and watch the landing of the survivors, gave one a most vivid idea of the pernicious effects which the voyage occasioned.
Many I have seen die while being landed, and I remember six men in one morning being disembarked in life at the pier, and dying before reaching the hospital. The complete prostration and exhaustion, written on the faces of all, told in characters which no words can express, the severity of the suffering through which they had passed.