upied by local offenders, instead
of the _forwarding_ prison which, according to the accounts that reach
us, is a disgrace to the civilized world, and where the exiles are
lodged while waiting to be "forwarded."
I pity Miss Kate Marsden if it should ever be her lot to witness the
knout used to a woman without the power of stopping it, or retaliating
upon the brute who is inflicting it. It would be almost the death of
her.
If we have been successful in interesting the readers of THE
ARGOSY in this lady and her mission, they will like to know that
she is not a wilful person starting off on a wild-goose chase on a
generous impulse without at all counting the cost. On the contrary, the
work she is now doing has been the desire of her life, and all the
training and discipline to which she has subjected herself has been for
the purpose of fitting her for it.
From her earliest childhood she has been an indefatigable worker among
the sick and wounded, with whom she has ever had the most intense
sympathy, and consequently an extraordinary power to soothe and comfort.
Young as she was at the time of the Turko-Russian war, she did good
service on the battle-fields and worked untiringly among every kind of
depressing surrounding. The beautiful cross upon her breast is a gift
from the Empress of Russia, as a recognition of the good work she did
among the wounded soldiers at that time. From that day to this, whether
in England or in New Zealand, her work has been steadily going on, ever
gaining information and experience, and at the same time doing an amount
of good difficult to calculate.
For one whole year she became, what I call for want of a better name,
an itinerant teacher of ambulance work, in places out of reach of
doctors in New Zealand. She taught the people how to deal with accidents
caused by the falling of trees, cuts with the axe, or kicks from vicious
horses, all of which are of frequent occurrence in the Bush. Again, she
taught the miners how to make use of surrounding materials in case of an
injury: how to bandage, and how to make a stretcher for moving a wounded
person from one place to another with such things as were handy, viz.,
with two poles and a man's coat, the poles to be placed through the arms
and the coat itself to be buttoned securely over the poles. Another
thing she taught in these out-of-the-way places was how to deal with
burns and foreign matter in the eye or ear--also accidents of frequen
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