(1) Thus the Purveying is _nil_--that is the whole truth, beyond bedding, bread, meat, cold water, fuel. Beyond the boiling _en masse_ in the great coppers of the general kitchen the meat is not cooked, the water is not boiled except what is done in my subsidiary kitchens. My schedule will show what I have purveyed. I have refused to go on purveying for the third Hospital, the Sultan's Serail[137]--the demands upon me there having been begun with twelve hundred articles, including shirts, the first night of our occupying it. I refer you to a List of what was _not_ in store, and to a copy of one requisition upon me sent last letter. [137] This is the "Palace Hospital." See above, p. 174. (2) The extraordinary circumstance of a whole army having been ordered to abandon its kits, as was done when we landed our men before Alma, has been overlooked entirely in all our system. The fact is, that I am now clothing the British Army. The sick were re-embarked at Balaclava for these Hospitals, without resuming their kits, also half-naked besides. And when discharged from here, they carry off, small blame to them, even my knives and forks--shirts, of course, and Hospital clothing also. The men who were sent to Abydos as convalescents were sent _in their Hospital dresses_, or they must have gone naked. The consequence is that not one single Hospital dress is now left in store, and I have substituted Turkish dressing-gowns from Stamboul (three bales in the passage are marked Hospital Gowns, but have not yet been "_sat upon_"). To purvey this Hospital is like pouring water into a sieve; and will be, till regimental stores have been sent out from England enough to clothe the naked and refill the kit. I have requisitions for _Uniform trousers_, for each and all of the articles of a kit, sent in to me. We have not yet heard of boots being sent out; the men come into Hospital half-shod. In a time of such calamity, unparalleled in the history, I believe, of calamity, I have a little compassion left even for the wretched Purveyor, swamped amid demands he never expected. But I have no compassion for the men who would rather see hundreds of lives lost than waive one scruple of the official conscience. (3) The Hospital and Army Stores come out in the same vessels--and up go our stores to Balaclava, and down they never come again, or have not yet.