The straw not being granted, he actually set to work to make hay; and,
being well aided by the soldiers, he soon saw them sleeping on
good mattresses. It was understood in England, and believed by the
Government, that every soldier in camp had three blankets; and after a
time, this came true: but in the interval, during the damp autumn and
bitter winter, they had but one. Lying on wet ground, with one damp and
dirty blanket over them, prepared hundreds for the hospital and the
grave. The mischief was owing to the jealousy of some of the medical
authorities, in the first place, who would not see, believe, or allow to
be reported, the fact that the men were in any way ill-supplied, because
these same doctors had specified the stores that would be wanted,--and
next, to the absence of a department for the actual distribution of
existing stores. With the bedding the case was the same as with the
lime-juice and the rice: there was plenty; but it was not served out
till too late. When the huts were inhabited, in the Crimea, and the
wooden platforms had a dry soil beneath, and every man had a bed of some
sort and three blankets, there was no more cholera or fever.
The American case is radically unlike that of any of the combatants in
the Crimean War, because they are on the soil of their own country,
within reach of their own railways, and always in the midst of the
ordinary commodities of life.
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