Littell's Living Age/Volume 135/Issue 1746/A Glimpse of Adrianople
A GLIMPSE OF ADRIANOPLE.
From a very interesting letter from Adrianople we take the following passages: —
"Adrinople (it is the local fashion to leave out the a) is in a very different condition to what it was a year or two years ago. Trade, indeed, is slack and commerce at a standstill; but the whole place, even to the back streets, is alive and thronged, and the crowds everywhere testify to activity. The road to the railway station is always busy; but it is as often the passage of files of bullock-wagons for the wounded as aught else, diversified now and then by the stopping of troops going up to the front. Visits to the station are always full of interest. Frequently special trains arrive in the middle of the night full of wounded; these are taken out, laid in wooden sheds erected for the purpose, where English surgeons dress wounds as quickly as possible all through, sometimes eight or ten hours' work ; then, clean and fed, the injured men remount the train and go on to Constantinople. The thing to see is when, as has several times occurred, a train of wounded going down meets a train of soldiers going up. No one could say, after that, that the Turks do not know how to cheer. Up jumps every man that can rise on his legs, every arm that can move is waved, and every throat that can utter a sound joins in the cheer with a yell of welcome, and perhaps of envy of those who are going to fight. With less noise, but with eager eyes and cheerful faces, the new-comers return the salute — not a laggard among them. They are not neatly dressed; they would not do for Aldershot; they are often somewhat dirty; they are of all sizes, and they do not look exquisitely disciplined; but their eagerness and their gladness make up for a great deal, and their patient endurance is beyond all praise.
"Next to the war movements, the relief is naturally the first interest here. All that has been done by Mr. Blunt is admirably done; he has followed the plan of collecting the women and children (there was scarcely a man among the fugitives) into decent but poor houses, insisting upon cleanliness, and giving to each woman one or two or three piastres, according to the number of the children; thus occupying the mothers in buying and contriving, instead of leaving them to croon idly over their sorrows. These women will contrive to feed and fatten out of the pittance given, and even, perhaps, to put by an odd piastre or two for better times. The two Catholic convents of the Missionnaires Apostoliques are all giving wise and simple relief in much the same way. Each has a house full of Moslem women and children, and another of Bulgarians. Mme. Camara's little hospital of Moslem women and children actually wounded in the war is quite a touching sight; and one cannot admire enough the unselfish devotion of the one lady who did not leave the city in panic, but remained to help with her own hands the poor things who were worse off than any one else at the moment. As wounds heal the hospital will gradually turn into a refuge. Near the railway station there is another small hospital for wounded Bulgarian women and children, attended partly by one of the English surgeons; but of them nearly all now are dead."