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 privati6n, 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 stiU 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 stiU 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 oflEicers. 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 orderlies 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 filth 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, 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 comphcated 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.
This is the darker side of the picture: it had a brighter one, and not a few of those who, entering the hospital with but frail hopes of recovery, are now restored to health and strength, will ever recognise with gratitude the tender care and constant attention of which they were the objects, at the hands of the overworked and scantily rewarded men, on whom was thrown so fearful a responsibility of life and death. And in their humble prayers for their benefactors at the throne of grace, her name assuredly will not be the least fervently uttered, who, quitting the luxuries and refinements of an English home, braved on her errand of mercy with unquenchable fortitude the fury of the elements, and the stealthy attacks of the pestilence that walketh in darkness; whose gentle hand soothed the fevered brow.
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
and whose consoling accents calmed the troubled spirit in the hour of distress and anguish — who stayed not day or night in her ceaseless labour of love, until she herself well-nigh fell a victim to her care for othei's.
The drawing represents the Sick Wharf at the moment of embarkation, and the spectator is supposed to be looking in the direction of Kadikoi and the Camp. The Naval Officer in charge, in the foreground, who is supporting the sick soldier into the boat, is Lieutenant Goss. On the right of the picture is Dr. Costello, and behind him Dr. Anderson. The large building on the hill-side, in the background, is the General Hospital at Balaklava.
A QUIET NIGHT IN THE BATTERIES.
A ATTERY (MAJOR CHAPMAN'S), 29th JANUARY, 1855.