The Press.
London, England, 1855-03-24 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

coming into our possession, since an agent is ap-
pointed at Pera to look after our boxes, and a store
is also opened here ou the shore to receive every-
thing for the hospitals.
At Kulleli great advances have been made, and
though so lately opened it is not now behind the
older hospitals. Nearly all the beds there are after
the French model, and furnished in the same way,
and this gives a great air of comfort to the wards as
well as affording real relief. The riding•school is
now completed, and quite ready to receive men, even
to clean shirts and warm clothing placed on every
pillow. Workmen are very busy here in every direc-
tion, and the cavalry stables are now being floored
and made fit for the men. Every effort is still
needed, since we learn with sorrow that 1,200 sick
men are daily expected. Major Campbell, our most
energetic Deputy-Assistant-Quartermaster General,
told me with pleasure that 850 beds were now ready
for the new lot, and that by removals of convalescents
to Smyrna and England room would be made for all.
The two hospital ships are found to be very gloomy
and unfit for soldiers, and efforts are being made to
get the men removed. Miss Nightingale hopes to
get some place for them in Seraglio Point. Lady
Stratford is greatly interested about all these changes,
and gives up some three or four days every week to
Kulleli, Scutari, or the Kiosk. At this latter build-
ing she has been providing for the comforts of the
officers who are ill by sending a steward, and making
other arrangements. The officers if left to them-
selves and their own servants are not to be envied
when ill.

An officer who has been down to Smyrna with sick
Speaks of the hospital there as being very good and
well provided for, and there are the same accounts of
its state from the chaplain there.
Lady Alicia Blackwood has most courageously
undertaken to help and comfort the soldiers' wives
who are here. They are in a most wretched condi-
tion, and need some one to help them, as far as they
will allow it to be done. Mr. Btacebridge and Lady
Alicia have at last got a house for a hospital for the
sick women; and thus I hope more good will be
really dono them than could be by merely giving
money and clothes. Here, again, all the difficulties
to be surmounted are incredible to any one unac-
quainted with the country; but Lady Alicia will not
easily be daut,ted in her good work.
I fear you will think that my accounts of the hos-
pitals are not confirmed by others which appear from
time to time. I write you only what I believe to be
true, and also what I see daily and almost hourly.
It may be that the cheering aspect is in my own
mind only ; but no imaginat►on can stand the test
of daily experience, and we all feel and express our
gladness at the daily change for the better. We
feel also that these men are much more cheerful
than they once were, and ask for news from home on
the war with eagerness. The repulse of Liprandi
and the Russian army has cheered them much, and
they seem glad that the Turks have so well done
their part. This tone of cheerfulness is valuable in
the chaplains' work, since the men are better able to
profit by our books and instructions; and we, too,
do not find it nearly so depressing to minister among
the men.

The deaths during the last ten days have de-
creased by one-half. During the previous ten days
the numbers had been seventy and eighty; now for
the last ten days they have never exceeded forty per
day, and the art-rags thirty-four. The sudden
change of temperature on Monday night last made
the surgeons apprehensive of a serious increase in
deaths. During the day of Monday it was warm as
our warmest days in May at home, and at sunset we
were 'Angering on the hill and enjoying the warmth ;
before twelve o'clock that night the snow fell heavily,
and next day a severe frost set in. A thaw com-
menced the day after, and it is now line warm May
weather. The number of deaths did not increase in
consequence of the change, and the men generally
seem as usual.

You will wonder. I fear, at my writing so calmly
about matters which are stirring deeply every heart
at home; but I have been so long here, and here
also when matters were so sadly different, that I
may, perhaps, take too favorable a view of them, or,
it may be, have become hardened to the sufferings
of others. But, at the same time, being thoroughly
accustomed to the work and state of affairs, enables
me to judge correctly ; and familiarity with the
most painful scenes, while it enables me to endure
them, enables tne also not to overstate them. I can-
not be too thankful to the Almighty Father that he
does not permit me to feel too acutely every scene of
suffering and &oath, otherwise my ministrations
annst be less useful, and probably health would
have given way. Many of my brother chaplains are
and have been failing, and some will, I fear, never
again return to the work to which they so nobly de-
voted themselves.

The day of prayer appointed by your bishops for
those at home will not be unmarked by u. here.
We shall feel cheered and strengthened by knowing

~e~ta~,

your work for na; and f dare hope, also, be fully
strengthened by Hun on whom you call for us and
our people.

Obituart

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL JOHN DUTY; C. 8., colonel
of the Bth (King's) Regiment, died on Saturday last,
at his residence in Jermyn-street. He entered the
army in 1795, from which time to 1813 he was ac-
tively employed with but slight intermission. Among
his earliest services were the campaign in the West
Indies in 1796, under Sir Ralph Abercromby ; expe-
dition to Holland, in 1796 ; in the East Indies, in
1799. He thence proceeded to Egypt, and was in
the campaign of 1801. He also served at the siege
of Copenhagen in 1807. In the Peninsula he was
with the 43rd Light Infantry in most of the remark-
able events of the war, having received the gold medal
for Badajoz, and the silver medal and six clasps for
Fuentes d'Onor, Ciudad Rodrigo, Vittoria, Pyrenees,
Nivelle, and Nive, besides several minor actions.
General Duffy watt wounded in the head at Vittoria,
and commanded the storming party at the capture of
Fort Reynard, an outwork of Ciudad Rodrigo.
LORD ERSKINE died on Monday last, at his house
in Sussex. His lordship was son of the great Lord
Erskine, and married, first, in 1800, Miss Cadwallader,
of Philadelphia, who died in 1843; secondly, in the
same year, Miss Travis, cousin of his first wife.
The deceased peer was a very old public servant,
having begun his diplomatic career as Minister to
the United States at the beginning of the present
century, and lie only retired from the same post, at
Munich, in 1843. His lordship is succeeded by his
eldest son, the Hon. Thomas Americus, now third
Baron Erskine.

SEEMS PACHA, the commander of the Egyptians at
the com Lat of Eupatoria, on which occasion be was
killed, was the Mameluke who escaped from the
massacre at Cairo, by jumping his horse over the
parapet, when Mehemet Ali, in 1811, ordered the
indiscriminate destruction of all the members of that
celebrated body then assembled in the town. Selim,
who was an exceedingly young man at the time,
seeing no other chance of escape, mounted his horse,
and forced him to spring from the lofty wall of that
town into the empty space. The animal was killed
by the fall, but the rider escaped, though not without
very grave contusions. Mehemet Ali, astonished
alike at the young man's resolution and good fortune,
ordered him to be spared, and in a short time he
perfectly recovered. He owed his subsequent mili-
tary career to the kindness of Colonel Selves, at pre-
sent generalissimo of the Egyptian forces, and well
known by the name of Soliman Pacha. Selim Pacha
was an excellent commander, and enjoyed the confi-
dence of his men to an extraordinary degree. In the
attack at Eupatoria he was hit in the head by a Rus-
sian bullet, and died instantaneously.