Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/321

 rOK THE INVASION. 291 although his appeal drew a wavmly concurring chap. response from the Duke of Newcastle, it produced no other effect, and he himself when receiving it was on the eve of embarking for the Crimea. On the 10th of August a fire broke out in the rireat ,, . ., . ^_ - . . Varna. J>ritish magazines at Varna, and a large quantity of military stores was consumed. But another and more dreadful enemy had now cuoicra. entered the camp of the Allies. From the period of its arrival in the Levant, the French army had been suffering much from sickness. In the Brit- ish army, on the contrary, though slight com- plaints were not unfrequent, the bodily condition of the men had been upon the whole very good ; and so it continued up to the 19th of July. On that day, out of the whole Light Division, there were only 110 in hospital. But it seems that one of the omens which portend the visitation of a great epidemic is a more than common flush of health. With the French, the cholera first showed itself on board their troop-ships whilst passing from Marseilles to the Dardanelles. It then ap- peared among the French quartered at Gallipoli, and followed their battalions into Bulgaria. There, its ravages increased, and before the beginning of the last week in July it reached the British army. summoned away to a distant land; hut the exceeding earnest- ness of his appeal gives me ground for believing that, if Bul- garia had continued to be the theatre of war, Lord Kaglaii would have persisted in his eflforts to raise up the subject peoiile of the province, and obtain for them, if not good government, at all events a much easier yoke than the one under which thov tlien lived.