Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

but saw one of his friends, who told me that he had slept in the French camp. I therefore gave him up, and determined to get rid of him as soon as possible. After visiting the town in company with a few friends whom I happened to meet there, we went to the Russian hospital, which we had been told was full of dead, sick, and wounded. During the few days that had elapsed since the capture of the city I had witnessed many awful scenes, but this was the most harrowing of all. Perhaps one of the most awful and sickening sights possible for humanity to conjure up was witnessed by myself and many others in the Russian hospital in the interior of Sebastopol. Piled up one on the other, or lying singly on the bare flooring, were strewn hundreds of Russians, dead and dying. The view would have struck terror into the heart of the greatest stoic. These men seemed to have been placed here out of the way to suffer and die, uncared for, unattended. On one side might be seen a poor creature writhing in the last throes of dissolution; on the other, a fine fellow with almost divine resignation, who had just rendered himself up to his Maker, having died in dreadful agony. Men without legs or arms, and some with frightful body wounds or bayonet thrusts, lay huddled in helpless confusion. Desolation and death grimly met us at each step. Then the effluvia arising from the bodies was horrible beyond description. CHAPTER XXXI. ILLNESS AND CHANGE OF SCENE. Business suspended--Holiday-time for the cooks--Breakfast in the Malakhoff--Transferred to the Mamelon Vert--Attack of Crimean fever--Kind attentions--Relapse--An unexpected visitor and a conversation--Laughable incident--Trip to Scutari--Captain Brown of the _Imperador_--Fellow-travellers--Fame in America--Brigadier-General Storks--Consolations--Bornet’s consideration--His farewell--Soyer House--Third illness--Severe attack of dysentery--Recovery--Grand ball at the English Embassy--The Sultan attends--“Elizabeth Quadrilles”--Arrival of my field-stoves--Off again to the Crimea--Letters suggesting improvements in the hospitals. For a few days all business seemed suspended in the camp, and the rage with every one was to visit the ruins of the far-famed city. The hospitals