failed to advance was that their
morale had been lowered, by reason of the privations they had
undergone. This was before the days of the Red Cross, the army
canteen, or the Y. M. C. A. with its homely comfort. The men had had
to shift for themselves. Nursing the sick and wounded was almost
unknown, until the white-clad figure of Florence Nightingale showed the
world its dereliction. Listen to what this devoted pioneer among
nurses has to say:

"Fancy working five nights out of seven in the trenches. Fancy being
thirty-six hours in them at a stretch, as they sometimes were, lying
down, or half-lying down often forty-eight hours with no food but raw
salt pork, sprinkled with sugar, rum, and biscuit; nothing hot, because
the exhausted soldier could not collect his own fuel, as he was
expected to do, to cook his own rations; and fancy through all this,
the army preserving their courage and patience, as they have done, and
being now eager (the old ones as well as the young ones) to be led into
the trenches. There was something sublime in the spectacle."

Sublime? Granted. But no soldier fights well on an empty stomach.

Despite their hardships and reverses, however, the Allies were at last
successful in the capture of Sebastopol. But it was a barren victory,
as the Russians had set fire to the town and destroyed practically
everything of value. The war soon afterwards ceased, and with it the
first hard lesson in Charles Gordon's military training. He had
entered it a somewhat careless youth. He came out of it a seasoned
veteran.

That his government had learned to appreciate his services is shown by
the fact that he was soon afterward placed on a joint commission of the
English, French, Russians, and Austrians, to lay down a boundary line
between Russia and her neighbors at the southwest. It was only one of
many later attempts to define the Balkans.

"The newly-ceded territory is in great disorder," writes Gordon. "The
inhabitants refuse to obey the Moldaves and own nobody's authority.
This is caused, I suspect, by Russian intrigues."

Already cracks were beginning to show in the new boundary wall.

After three years of steady but interesting work following up the
ravages of war, Gordon returned home. It was a rest well earned, and
likewise needed, for there were still more strenuous days ahead. Then
back he went, in the Spring of 1858, to complete his work in the
Caucasus.

"I am pretty tired of