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

opening to view, but, owing to the thick atmosphere, appeared nothing but a confused mass. Twenty minutes later we were entering the Bosphorus, the grandeur and magnificence of which, though often described, I cannot pass without a few remarks. My mind was quite overpowered when I learnt that the monster building before us was the Scutari Hospital--a town in itself--and I reflected that it was full of sick and wounded; that each patient would require from three to four articles of diet daily, making a total of several thousand per diem to be provided in some shape or other; and that I had undertaken to reform and introduce a better organization in the cooking department, where all was confusion, in so strange a country. I must confess that, for an hour or so, I was quite at a loss to think how I should commence operations. I did not know one official there. I had not the least idea how I should be received; and, after all, I might probably catch the fever, or some other complaint at the time raging within its walls. Suddenly I recollected the plan I had explained to the Duchess of Sutherland and her noble circle, which was to be tried upon a hundred patients. This had entirely escaped my memory; and in a few minutes my puzzled brain was as clear as a bell, and I felt confident of success. “If I succeed with a hundred,” said I, “in a very short time I can manage a thousand, providing I meet with proper support.” I afterwards learnt from the doctor on board, that the large red brick building on the right, about half a mile from the Barrack Hospital, was called the General Hospital, in which there were at least five or six hundred patients. My resolution as to how I should act was then fixed; nothing appeared difficult to me; and, instead of fearing the undertaking, I was most anxious to begin. Having been advised to call at Pera, to announce my arrival, and pay my duty to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, before