Alas! through mismanagement, these stores had been rotting on the shore at Varna, instead of reaching Scutari, and much that had arrived was packed beneath heavy ammunition and difficult to get at. The loss of the _Prince_, laden with supplies, was a culminating disaster which occurred on November 14th, about two weeks after Miss Nightingale’s arrival. The reticence of the hospital authorities prevented the true state of affairs from reaching the British public. Indeed, the whole Service, from commandant to orderly, conspired to say “All right,” when all was wrong. One of the sisters has described how this policy worked in the wards. An orderly officer took the rounds of the wards every night, to see that all was in order. He was of course expected by the orderlies, and the moment he raised the latch he received the word, “All right, your honour,” and passed on. This was hospital inspection! In excuse for the officers who were thus easily put off, it may be said that the wards were filled with pestilence, and the air so polluted by cholera and fever patients that it seemed courting death to enter. For that reason orderlies already on the sick list were set to act as nurses, and they often drank the brandy which it was their duty to administer to the patients, in order to keep up their spirits, or “drown their grief,” as they preferred to put it. Men in this condition became very callous. Those stricken with cholera had their sufferings terribly enhanced by the dread of being buried alive, and used to beseech the orderlies not to send them to the dead-house until quite sure that they had breathed their last. Utter collapse was the last stage of Asiatic cholera, and the orderlies took little pains to ascertain when the exact moment of dissolution came; consequently numbers of still living men were hurried to the dead-house. One does not wish to hold up to blame and execration the seeming inhumanity of the orderlies. They were set to do work for which they were untrained and often physically unfit, and were also demoralised by the shocking condition of the wards. It was the system rather than individuals which was to blame. Into these insanitary, filthy, and pestilential wards came the Lady-in-Chief, and she did not say “All right.” It was useless for officialdom to “pooh-pooh”: she, fortunately, had Government authority. What her quick eye saw was communicated to the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Raglan, and to Mr. Sidney Herbert at the War Office, and brought in due course the needed instructions for reform.