the cholera has assumed a phase which baffles our best
efforts, and throws all our past data to the winds. It
sometimes is quite painless; there is often little or no
purging, but the sufferer is seized with violent spasms in
the stomach, which increase in intensity till collapse is
established, and death then rapidly follows, attended
with but little exhibition of agony. As an instance of
the capricious action of the disease, I may mention what
was told me by one of our principal surgeons here. He
had been to visit the camp of the Fifth Dragoon Guards
and of the Enniskillens, which was pitched in a very
healthy-looking site. There, however, sickness found
these skeletons of regiments (for all our cavalry
regiments are mere skeletons of regiments and nothing
more, as few colonels could bring 250 sabres into the
field in the healthiest state of their troops) were
reduced considerably—in fact, they lost about twenty-six
men. During the doctor's inspection there was a heavy
thunder-storm; and as he sheltered in one of the tents,
he expressed his satisfaction at an occurrence which, in
accordance with vulgar notions and even with philosophical
investigation, is supposed to produce that
beneficial operation called 'clearing the air;' but after the
thunder-storm the disease became worse, and when the
surgeon went down to his own quarters he found that
in the very height of the electrical discharges five men
of the Ambulance Corps—a body of men heretofore
singularly free from illness—had been seized with
cholera, and of those five men four were dead in less
than six hours. The conduct of many of the men,
French and English, seems characterised by a
recklessness which verges on insanity. You find them lying
drunk in the kennels, or in the ditches by the
roadsides, under the blazing rays of the sun, covered with
swarms of flies. You see them in stupid sobriety gravely
paring the rind off cucumbers of portentous dimensions,
and eating the deadly cylinders one after another, to
the number of six or eight, till there is no room for
more,—all the while sitting in groups in the fields or on
the flags by the shops in the open street, and looking as
if they thought they were adopting highly sanitary
measures for their health's sake; or frequently three or
four of them will make a happy bargain with a Greek
for a large basketful of apricots, 'killjohns,' scarlet
pumpkins, water melons, wooden pears, greengages
and plums; and then they retire beneath the shade of
a tree, where they divide and eat the luscious food till
naught remains but a heap of peel, rind, and stones.
They dilute the mass of food with raki, or peach brandy,
and then straggle home or go to sleep as best they can.
One day I saw a Zouave and a huge Grenadier
staggering up the street arm in arm, each being literally
laden with enormous pumpkins and cucumbers, and in
the intervals of song—for one was shouting out, 'Cheer,
boys, cheer,' in irregular spasms, and the other was
chanting some love ditty of a very lachrymose character
—they were feeding each other with a cucumber. One
took a bite and handed it to his friend, who did the
same; and thus they were continuing their amphibian
banquet, till the Englishman slipped on a stone and
went down into the mud, bringing his friend after him,
pumpkins, cucumbers, and all. The Frenchman
disengaged himself briskly; but the Grenadier at once
composed himself to sleep, notwithstanding the
entreaties of his companion. After dragging at him, head,
legs, arms, and shoulders, the Zouave found he could
make no impression on the inert mass of his friend;
and, regarding him in the most tragic manner possible,
he clasped his hand, and exclaimed, 'Tu es là, donc,
mon ami, mon cher, Jeeon! Eh bien, je me coucherai
avec toi;' and, calmly fixing a couple of cucumbers for
a pillow, he lay down, and was soon snoring in the
gutter in unison with his ally. I was glad to see them
taken off to the Corps de Garde in about five minutes
afterwards, as a lucky patrol happened to come its
round through the street. The Turkish soldiers are
equally careless of their diet and living. I am
looking at about twenty of them, belonging to a battery,
under the window of the room in which I am writing,
busily engaged in the consumption of small bullety-
looking melons. They are at it all day, except when
they are smoking, or (listen to this!) saying their
prayers; for the poor fellows are for the most part very
regular in their devotions, and when they have finished
them they glare and scowl at Christians in a fashion
fearful to behold for ten minutes afterwards. There
can be no reason for the illness of our men so far as the
commissariat supplies are concerned; at least, they have
at present a very full and ample ration; in fact, there
never yet was an army in the field which ever received
anything like it. The ration is as follows, daily:
1½lb. of meat, beef or mutton; 1½lb. of bread, or 1lb. of
biscuit if the bread is bad or is not ready; 1oz. of coffee,
1¾oz. of sugar, 2oz. of rice, and half a gill of rum.
For the coffee and sugar the soldier pays a penny; for
the rice and rum he pays nothing. It is almost a pity
that the rum and the coffee were not served out long
ago, as I suggested they should; for, no doubt, the men
required some stimulant, considering the mode of life
to which they had been accustomed and the peculiarly
relaxing effects of this climate. As it is, however, the
ration is most ample, and no army in the history of the
world was ever so well fed; indeed, I doubt if an army
ever received from its country half so good an allowance
regularly as our men in Turkey do."

The following is also from Varna, two days later—
August 14th; communicated by a "special correspondent"
of the Morning Post, with the assistance of one
of the army chaplains. "Among the French the
mortality has been terrible. Not only did they lose, it
is now said, 3000 men during their expedition to
Kustendje, but after their return there were buried for
several days, on an average, 130 men. With us, matters
have, thank God, been somewhat better; yet, considering
our numbers, our visitation has been severe. By
letter received yesterday from the Light Division, my
friend speaks of the past in these word—'Your kind
letter I should have answered sooner, but from the
moment I received it the sick have possessed me. The
cholera exhibited its hideous presence first in our division
on Saturday night the 22nd of July; when some
men of the seventh, twenty-third, and eighty-eighth
Regiments were cut off. From that time to this I have
not had a second unoccupied. The scenes of
Newcastle have been renewed to me, and bitter has been my
trial. Often have I been with the dying at 2 A.M., and
concluded my hard day's work with funerals at 10
o'clock at night, when I was glad to throw myself upon
my bed. I now generally start at 7 o'clock A.M., and
visit all the hospitals. This, with committing the
departed to their last home, occupies me till half-past
seven in the evening; so anything like correspondence
is out of the question. The heat has been most oppressive,
and I suffer from continued sickness of stomach,
with want of appetite. I attribute this to being so long
under the influence of a close cholera atmosphere. I
cannot conceive how poor Shehan, the Roman Catholic
priest, holds out; for he is most active, and his frame
is so slight when compared with mine: but sometimes
the thin are very wiry, and bear a vast amount of
labour; he certainly does, for he never complains for
one moment of fatigue. I have a morning service, with
short sermon, almost every day in each hospital, after
seeking the sick from bed to bed; and this taxes the
mind and body sharply; but what must it be where,
besides the strain upon the mind and nerves, there is
much which may be called mechanical work—excuse me
—extreme unction—bending over the dying to hear their
confessions, &c. Up to the 5th of August, we had lost
eighty-five men and two women. Major Levinge, of
the Artillery, took 340 drops of laudanum, by mistake,
instead of twenty. We also lost Dr. Jenkins of the
twenty-third Fusiliers, and Lieutenant Massy of the
seventy-seventh—the latter had just arrived with the
draught—only three days in Turkey, and summoned
away. The place in which we are now encamped is
called the Valley of the Plague; the Russians having
lost 7000 men here of that disease.'.... The Second
Division, encamped about three miles from Devna, has
been highly favoured: cholera has been scarcely known.
During the last day or two a melancholy feeling pervaded
the regiments, on account of the sudden deaths in our
army of two field-officers and a subaltern—Lieutenant-
Colonel Elliot, seventy-ninth Regiment, the Major of
the same regiment, and Lieutenant Turner. The Third
Division, encamped on the hill to the south of Varna