I was soon past understanding anything; but, after the hot dose, I was wrapped in hot blankets, friction, with strong stimulating liniments, being applied along the spine by the hard hands of two black slaves, and heated bricks were placed to my feet and hands; and under all this process I fainted away. For days I was as one who is in a dream, passive in the hands of those sable assistants, who, doubtless, thought a bowstring would have proved a "perfect cure," and a saving of considerable trouble. The green frogged coat, the crimson fez, and the dark face of the Italian doctor, as he came from time to time, seemed all a portion of the phantasmagoria which surrounded me; but there came anon a sweeter, a softer, and more feminine face, with a lighter and a smaller hand, that seemed to touch me and smooth my pillow; and with this vision came thoughts of Louisa, of Cora, of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig and his magic spells, and then I would close my eyes, wondering whether I was asleep or awake, or if in a dream, from which I would waken, to find myself in my cool bell-tent in the green breezy vale of Aladyn, in my familiar quarters at Canterbury, or it might be in the dear old room of my boyhood, where my mother had so often hung over me and watched, in Calderwood Glen, and then I seemed to hear the cawing of the hoodiecrows among the ancient trees that rustled their green leaves in the summer wind. The murmuring breeze that came so pleasantly to my dreaming ear passed over wooded mountains; but, alas! they were those of Bulgaria, and not my native land. Amid all the wild ideas induced by my condition was the overpowering sense of weakness, with intense prostration and lassitude; but now, thanks to Heaven, to human skill, to my own youth and strength, the terrible disease was passing away. While, by a stupidity or treachery closely akin to treason, our army, during the hot, breathless months of a Bulgarian summer, lay rotting and inactive at Varna, as if merely waiting the approach of winter to open a campaign with Russia—hardy Russia, the land of ice and snows, whose rash emperor boasted that her two most terrible generals were January and February—the fell disease which prostrated me was making sad havoc among my brave and patient comrades. The 7th, 23rd, and 88th regiments, and all the infantry generally—the Highlanders almost excepted, their Celtic costume being an admirable safeguard by its warmth about the loins—were decimated by cholera. The Inniskillings and 5th Dragoon Guards were reduced to mere skeletons, and few cavalry colonels could bring more than two hundred and fifty sabres into the field. So much was my own corps reduced, that on one parade Beverley only mustered two hundred lances; but many convalescents joined after. It was remarked that many of the ambulance corps, after what was termed "the great thunder-storm," died within five hours of being assailed by the plague.