The Queen had asked Miss Nightingale to make suggestions as to what Her Majesty could do "to testify her sense of the courage and endurance so abundantly shown by her sick soldiers." One of the suggestions submitted was the rectification just mentioned. Another suggestion was that a Firman should be immediately asked of the Sultan granting the military cemetery at Scutari to the British, and that Her Majesty should have it enclosed by a stone wall. "There are already, alas!" wrote Miss Nightingale, "about a thousand lying in this cemetery. Nine hundred were reported last week. We have buried one hundred in the last two days only. The spot is beautiful, overlooking the Sea of Marmora, and occupies the space between the General Hospital wall and the edge of the sea-cliff." The suggestion must have gone straight to the Queen's heart, for Miss Nightingale was informed that Her Majesty had written on the subject both to Lord Clarendon, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and to the British Ambassador to the Porte. The Firman was obtained in due course, and the well-kept British enclosure attracts the attention of travellers to this day by contrast with the Oriental burial-places. It was again at Miss Nightingale's suggestion that a memorial obelisk, far seen in lonely splendour, was erected "by Queen Victoria and her people."[136] [136] In 1865 Miss Nightingale, after an energetic correspondence with the War Office, secured payment, long before promised, to an English custode. But I must not linger further over points of detail. Miss Nightingale's eye for detail did not prevent her from taking comprehensive views, and from time to time she sent to Mr. Herbert schemes of reorganization. In the following letter, of January 8, 1855, she exposed the extent and nature of the evil in the hospitals, and the kind of reform which was needed to remedy them:-- As the larger proportion of the army (in which we are told that there are not two thousand sound men) is coming into hospital--as there are therefore thousands of lives at stake--as, in a service where the future of the official servants is dependent upon the personal interest of one man, these cannot be expected to peril that future by getting themselves shelved as innovators. I feel that this is no time for compliments or false shame; and that you will never hear the whole truth, troublesome as it is, except from one independent of promotion.... I subjoin a rough estimate of what has been given out by me during one month--_the whole at the "requisition" of the Medical Men_--all of which I have by me (merely in order to substantiate the facts of the destitution of these hospitals). Since the 17th December, we have received 3400 sick, and I have made no sum total as yet of what has been done for these new-comers by us--excepting for one corridor, which I enclose.