The troops were disembarked in the course of the day, and marched out to encamp, eight miles and a half north of Gallipoli, at a place called Bulair. The camp was occupied by the Rifles and Sappers and Miners, within three miles of the village. It was seated on a gentle slope of the ridge which runs along the isthmus, and commanded a view of the Gulf of Saros, bat the Sea of Marmora was not visible. Sanitary and certain other considerations may have rendered it advisable not to select this village itself, or some point closer to it, as the position for the camp; but the isthmus was narrower at Bulair, could be more easily defended, would not have required so much time or labour to put it into a good state of defence, and appeared to be better adapted for an army as regards shelter and water than the position chosen. Bulair is ten and a half miles from Gallipoli, so the camp was about seven and a half from the port at which its supplies were landed, and where its reinforcements arrived.
On Thursday there was a general hunt for quarters through the town. The General got a very fine place in a beau quartier, with a view of an old Turk on a counter looking at his toes in perpetual perspective. The consul, attended by the dragoman and a train of lodging seekers, went from house to house; but it was not till the eye had got accustomed to the general style of the buildings and fittings that any of them seemed willing to accept the places offered them. The hall door, which is an antiquated concern — not affording any particular resistance to the air to speak of — opens on an apartment with clay walls about ten feet high, and of the length and breadth of the whole house. It is garnished with the odds and ends of the domestic deity — empty barrels, casks of home-made wine, buckets, baskets, &c. At one side a rough staircase, creaking at every step, conducts one to a saloon on the first floor. This is of the plainest possible appearance. On the sides are stuck prints of the " Nicolaus ho basileus," of the Virgin and Child, and engravings from Jerusalem. The Greeks are iconoclasts, and hate images, but they adore picture's. A yellow Jonah in a crimson whale with fiery entrails is a favourite subject, and doubtless bears some allegorical meaning to their own position in Turkey. From this saloon open the two or three rooms of the house — the kitchen, the divan, and the principal bedroom. There is no furniture. The floors are covered with matting, but with the exception of the cushions on the raised platform round the wall of the room (about eighteen inches from the floor), there is nothing else in the rooms offered for general competition to the public. Above are dark attics. In such a lodging as this, in the house of the widow Papadoulos, was I at last established to do the best I could without servant or equipment.
Water was some way off, and I might have been seen stalking up the street with as much dignity as was compatible with carrying a sheep's liver on a stick in one hand, some lard in the other, and a loaf of black bread under my arm back from market. There was not a pound of butter in the whole country, meat was very scarce, fowls impossible; but the country wine was fair enough, and eggs were not so rare as might be imagined from the want of poultry.
While our sick men had not a mattress to lie down upon, and were without blankets, the French were well provided for. No medical comforts were forwarded from Malta, — and so when a poor fellow was sinking the doctor had to go to the General's and get a bottle of wine for him. The hospital sergeant was sent out with a sovereign to buy coffee, sugar, and other things of the kind for the sick, but he could not get them, as no change was to be had in the place. In the French hospital everything requisite was nicely made up in small packages and marked with labels, so that what was wanted might be procured in a minute.