Perhaps one of the most awful and sickening sights possible for humanity to conjure up was witnessed by myself and many others in the Russian hospital in the interior of Sebastopol. Piled up one on the other, or lying singly on the bare flooring, were strewn hundreds of Russians, dead and dying. The view would have struck terror into the heart of the greatest stoic. These men seemed to have been placed here out of the way to suffer and die, uncared for, unattended. On one side might be seen a poor creature writhing in the last throes of dissolution; on the other, a fine fellow with almost divine resignation, who had just rendered himself up to his Maker, having died in dreadful agony. Men without legs or arms, and some with frightful body wounds or bayonet thrusts, lay huddled in helpless confusion. Desolation and death grimly met us at each step. Then the effluvia arising from the bodies was horrible beyond description. CHAPTER XXXI. ILLNESS AND CHANGE OF SCENE. Business suspended--Holiday-time for the cooks--Breakfast in the Malakhoff--Transferred to the Mamelon Vert--Attack of Crimean fever--Kind attentions--Relapse--An unexpected visitor and a conversation--Laughable incident--Trip to Scutari--Captain Brown of the _Imperador_--Fellow-travellers--Fame in America--Brigadier-General Storks--Consolations--Bornet’s consideration--His farewell--Soyer House--Third illness--Severe attack of dysentery--Recovery--Grand ball at the English Embassy--The Sultan attends--“Elizabeth Quadrilles”--Arrival of my field-stoves--Off again to the Crimea--Letters suggesting improvements in the hospitals.