At the close of the year there were 3500 sick in the British camp before Sebastopol, and it was not too much to say that their illness had, for the most part, been caused by hard work in bad weather, and by exposure to wet without any adequate protection. Think of a tent pitched, as it were, at the bottom of a marsh, into which some twelve or fourteen miserable creatures, drenched to the skin, had to creep for shelter after twelve hours of vigil in a trench like a canal, and then reflect what state these poor fellows must have been in at the end of a night and day spent in such _shelter_, huddled together without any change of clothing, and lying packed up as close as they could be stowed in saturated blankets. But why were they in tents? Where were the huts which had been sent out to them? The huts were on board ships in the harbour of Balaklava. Some of these huts, of which we heard so much, were floating about the beach; others had been landed, and now and then I met a wretched pony, knee-deep in mud, struggling on beneath the weight of two thin deal planks, a small portion of one of these huts, which were most probably converted into firewood after lying for some time in the camp, or turned into stabling for officers' horses when enough of _disjecta membra_ had been collected. Had central depôts been established, as Mr. Filder proposed, while the fine weather lasted, much, if not all, of the misery and suffering of the men and of the loss of horses would have been averted. It may be true that the enemy were suffering still more than our own men, but the calculation of equal losses on the part of England and on the part of Russia in the article of soldiery, cannot be regarded as an ingredient in the consideration of our position. Our force was deprived of about 100 men every twenty-four hours. There were between 7000 and 8000 men sick, wounded, and convalescent in the hospitals on the Bosphorus. The 39th Regiment before it had landed was provided with some protection against the severity of the weather--not by government, but by _The Times_ Commissioner at Scutari: and I heard from the best authority that the bounty of the subscribers to the fund intrusted to _The Times_ for distribution was not only well bestowed to the men, but that the officers of the regiments had evinced the greatest satisfaction at the comfort. When the various articles sent up by _The Times_ Commissioner arrived at the camp, there was a rush made to get them by the regimental medical officers, and no false delicacy was evinced by them in availing themselves of the luxuries and necessaries placed at their disposal, and of which they had been in so much need.