Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/175

STATE BEFORE THE HUERICANE. 131 Our establishment of hospitals in the Levant chap extended at one time to the Dardanelles, spread- 1_. ing even yet further south to Ehodes as well as to Smyrna ; and we had some floating infirmaries in the Golden Horn, of which one — always ably conducted — belonged to the Eoyal Navy. For the most part, however, our hospitals in the Levant were established on the shores of the Bosphorus, and amongst these, the one at Pera appropriated to our sailors was always, it seems, well ordered. Amongst the hospitals for our laud- service troops on the shores of the Bos- phorus, the one at Koullali received a large number of patients ; but by far the greatest part of our Levantine hospital system became con- centrated at Scutari, and there perhaps one may say — rife with horror and anguish and death — was the capital city of those who watched over the sick and the wounded — the prostrated part of our army.(-^^) The opening of the ' General Hospital ' at Scutari was followed up two months later by planting a second and more extensive establish- ment in another part of the town ; and thence- forth, although other buildings were subsequently used for like purposes, this vast Barrack Hos- pital — for that was the name it bore — continued to be the greatest of all, becoming also pre- eminent for the sufferings and mortality long rife in its wards and corridors, but now, moreover, remembered, and destined to be remembered hereafter, because it was here that the heroine whose name is worshipped in England long