It received, not without reason, the
name of the 'middle passage'. Between, and sometimes on the
decks, the wounded, the sick, and the dying were crowded-- men
who had just undergone the amputation of limbs, men in the
clutches of fever or of frostbite, men in the last stages of
dysentry and cholera-- without beds, sometimes without blankets,
often hardly clothed. The one or two surgeons on board did what
they could; but medical stores were lacking, and the only form of
nursing available was that provided by a handful of invalid
soldiers who were usually themselves prostrate by the end of the
voyage. There was no other food beside the ordinary salt rations
of ship diet; and even the water was sometimes so stored that it
was out of reach of the weak. For many months, the average of
deaths during these voyages was seventy-four in 1,000; the
corpses were shot out into the waters; and who shall say that
they were the most unfortunate? At Scutari, the landing-stage,
constructed with all the perverseness of Oriental ingenuity,
could only be approached with great difficulty, and, in rough
weather, not at all. When it was reached, what remained of the
men in the ships had first to be disembarked, and then conveyed
up a steep slope of a quarter of a mile to the nearest of the
hospitals. The most serious cases might be put upon stretchers--
for there were far too few for all; the rest were carried or
dragged up the hill by such convalescent soldiers as could be got
together, who were not too obviously infirm for the work.
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