was not half the mortality in the tents,
horrible as were the sufferings and privations of the men there.

"The whole of yesterday," writes one of the nurses a few days after
they had arrived, "one could only forget one's own existence, for it
was spent, first in sewing the men's mattresses together, and then
in washing them, and assisting the surgeons, when we could, in
dressing their ghastly wounds after their five days' confinement on
board ship, during which space their wounds had not been dressed.
Hundreds of men with fever, dysentery, and cholera (the wounded were
the smaller portion) filled the wards in succession, from the
overcrowded transports."

Miss Nightingale's position was a most difficult one. Everything was
in disorder, and every official was extremely jealous of
interference. Miss Nightingale, however, at once impressed upon her
staff the duty of obeying the doctors' orders, as she did herself.
An invalids' kitchen was established immediately by her to
supplement the rations. A laundry was added; the nursing itself,
was, however, the most difficult and important part of the work.

But it would take far too much space to give all the details of that
kind but strict administration which brought comparative comfort and
a low death-rate into the Scutari hospitals. During a year and a
half the labor of getting the hospitals into working order was
enormous, but before the peace arrived they were models of what such
institutions may be.

Speaking of Miss Nightingale in the hospital at Scutari, the _Times_
correspondent wrote: "Wherever there is disease in its most
dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh,
there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant
presence is an influence of good comfort even amid the struggles of
expiring nature. She is a ministering angel, without any
exaggeration, in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides
quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with
gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have
retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down
upon these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed, alone, with
a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. With the
heart of a true woman and the manner of a lady, accomplished and
refined beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness
of judgment and promptitude and decision of character. The popular
instin