Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/176

 132 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, strove and fought for our soldiery against a ^^' host of destroyers — destroyers more to be dreaded than all the enemy's legions. When Lord Kaglan, moving up to Bulgaria, could no longer in person be watching our hos- pital system at Scutari, he there left in com- mand Major Sillery ; and, although the power of this officer might have borne at the time fair proportion to his then sphere of action, it was far from being commensurate with the hugely augmented burthen laid on him a few months later, when the overcharged Scutari hospitals were receiving shiploads and shiploads of sick and wounded men brought down from em- poisoned and war-stricken lands where epidemic and other diseases and cruel privations and hard- ships were largely surpassing battles in the work of disabling and slaying. Since Lord Eaglan at that time was busied at a seat of war lying severed from our Levantine hospitals by a distance of hundreds of miles, he of course could only make his power reach them by acting through others, and could only through others acquire any knowledge of their condition or wants. Without being unduly trustful, he apparently miglit have felt very sure that his subordinates would duly apprise him of any serious wants affecting our Levantine hospitals which could not be met on the spot ; and, since no complaints from those quarters found their way to him in the Crimea, he had evidently ■ some right to conclude that all must be going on well. He did not, however, thus trust to