Montreal suffered terribly, also. There the Government caused to be erected three sheds of provisory hospitals from 100 to 150 feet in length and from 40 to 50 feet in width on the river banks at Point St. Charles. Soon eleven sheds had to be erected to receive the sick. In June, the city was in consternation and many fled to the country. But there were many who did noble service. The governor general, Lord Elgin, who had made his first coming to Montreal on January 29th, visited the sheds; the mayor, John E. Mills, also made frequent visits and in November his assiduous devotion brought him low in death, a martyr to civic duty. The clergy, the doctors and the women of the city, Catholic and Protestants, were heroic in their services. The priests hurried down to the sick who were mostly Catholics, but only a few, two Sulpicians and a Jesuit, du Ranquet, could speak English adequately. In this extremity the rector of the Jesuits, who had returned to the city since 1842, sent to Fordham University, and two priests, Fathers du Merle and Michael Driscoll, were sent to assist Father du Ranquet, who was the first of the Montreal priests on the ground. This devoted man found the sick or dead lying in rows stretched on the bare ground, and there he ministered till 3 o’clock in the morning. Conditions were soon improved by the municipal authorities. Wooden bunks were built to hold two patients; there were no mattresses but only straw strewn under them. Oftentimes the living lay side by side with the dead. To add to the horror, the letters of this period tell us that “after a few weeks’ service these wooden structures contained colonies of bugs in every cranny; the wool, the cotton, the wood were black with them. Double the number of nurses and servants would not have sufficed to keep this monstrous hospital clean.” Things were better when the tents to be given to those who, unable to find shelter in the sheds, were placed on the banks of the St. Lawrence with a blanket over them, under the trees. Fortunately it was summertime.