Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/232

188 THE WliNTEIl TROUBLES. CHAT. Therefore, what the stricken sohiier eiicoun- tered when entering the haven prepared for him by rich, clumsy, improvident England, was not only a fresh access of misery, too often followed by death, but misery and death brouglit about by a sort of causation which his country, if acting with prudence and unhampered by its system of polity, could hardly have failed to arrest. How angels descended upon these scenes of wretchedness, and — within the sphere of their mission — turned evil at last into good, we shall by-and-by not fail to see. But they had not at once their reward in the improving state of the sufferers, or the lessened amount of mortality ; for poisons — deadly poisons — were rife, which could not be killed or averted by the excellence of the internal management ; and in- deed the brave effort, though comforting — beyond measure comforting — to our prostrate soldiers, was so ill-requited at first by success in the strife against Death, as to seem but little less desperate than trying to shut out wet from the cabin of a sinking siiip ; for against gentle care and toil at the bedsides of patients, the rank poisons had overwhelming, had ]iaramount strength, and were only destined to }-icld when attacked by the skilled engineer with his train of hard-handed workmen. Till assailants of that kind proved able to destroy the true homes of disease, lapse of time passing under conditions which suffered the malign germs to grow, and besides, the added numbers upon numbers of wounded and sick