Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/219

SUFFERINGS OF THE AKMIES. 175 feared that, if once removed, they could hardly chap again be put on. The same cause, it seems, 1. often induced him to conceal incipient symptoms of frost-bite by denying, when medically ques- tioned, that he had any sense of numbness in liis feet. The evils afflicting our camp kept on acting and reacting on each other with a baneful effect ; for, because suffering wet and cold, and because deprived of due rest by an excessive burthen of duties, the soldier more than ever required both wholesome and generous food, yet — benumbed and tired out under stress of those very hard- ships which had made him greatly need such a diet — he too often shunned the toil necessary for grubbing up fuel and duly preparing his ration. And again, since the animal food issued out to him during the winter was for the most part salt meat, his liealth became dependent upon a supply of those other aliments which alone under such conditions could secure him from the inroads of scurvy ; yet such antidotes (in sufficient abun- dance) not having been brought up to camp, though sometimes they might be found at the port, his great weariness here entered once more into the compound of evil, for it prevented liis seizing the occasions which now and then offered him vegetal)les, if only he would go down and fetch them ; and again — pursuing him round in the same vicious circle — liis weakness and in- cipient disease, resulting from want of apt food, made him every day less and less able to bear the cold and fatigue with which his troubles began.