This was the woman whose starting for the East was at once felt to
be the beginning of better things; but so prejudiced were many good
English people against women-nurses for soldiers, that Mrs. Jameson,
writing at the time, calls the scheme "an undertaking wholly new to
our English customs, much at variance with the usual education given
to women in this country." She, sensible woman, one in advance of
her day, hoped it would succeed, but hoped rather faintly. "If it
succeeds," she goes on, "it will be the true, the lasting glory of
Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants, that they
have broken down a 'Chinese wall of prejudices,' religious, social,
professional, and have established a precedent which will, indeed,
multiply the good to all time."

The little band of nurses crossed the Channel to Boulogne, where
they found the fisherwomen eager for the honor of carrying their
luggage to the railway. This display, however, seemed to Miss
Nightingale to be so out of keeping with the deep gravity of her
mission, that, at her wish, it was not repeated at any of the
stopping-places during the route. The Vectis took the nurses across
the Mediterranean, and a terribly rough passage they had. On
November 5th, the very day on which the battle of Inkermann was
fought, the ship arrived at Scutari.

Miss Nightingale and her nurses landed during the afternoon, and it
was remarked at the time that their neat black dresses formed a
strong contrast to those of the usual hospital attendants.

The great Barrack Hospital at Scutari, which had been lent to the
British by the Turkish Government, was an enormous quadrangular
building, a quarter of a mile each way, with square towers at each
angle. It stood on the Asiatic shore a hundred feet above the
Bosphorus. Another large hospital stood near; the whole, at times,
containing as many as four thousand men. The whole were placed under
Miss Nightingale's care. The nurses were lodged in the southeast
tower.

The extent of corridors in the great hospital, story above story, in
which the sick and wounded were at first laid on wretched
palliasses, as close together as they could be placed, made her
inspection and care most difficult. There were two rows of
mattresses in the corridors, where two persons could hardly pass
abreast between foot and foot. The mortality, when the _Times_ first
took up the cause of the sick and wounded, was enormous. In the
Crimea itself there