Miss Nightingale's work during her second and third visits to the Crimea (of two months in 1855, and of three in 1856) was the most arduous, and in some respects the most worrying, of all her labours in the East. The distances between the several Crimean hospitals, enumerated in an earlier chapter (p. 254), were great; how bad were the roads is known to every one who has read anything about the Crimean War; and Miss Nightingale experienced much of the rigour of a Crimean winter. "The extraordinary exertions she imposed upon herself would have been perfectly incredible," wrote M. Soyer, "if they had not been witnessed by many. I can vouch for the fact, having frequently accompanied her to the [Castle] Hospital as well as to the Monastery. The return from these places at night was a very dangerous experience, as the road led across a very uneven country. It was still more perilous when snow was upon the ground. I have seen her stand for hours at the top of a bleak rocky mountain near the Hospital, giving her instructions while the snow was falling heavily." She had for some years been somewhat subject to rheumatism, and in the Crimea she was at times tortured by sciatica. But she was "acclimatised," she said, and was strong to endure. Sometimes she spent long days in the saddle. At other times she drove in a rough cart. Her first conveyance was a cart--drawn by a mule and driven, adds the lively Soyer, by a donkey; and she suffered a nasty upset in it. Colonel McMurdo, Commandant of the Land Transport Corps,[195] then kindly gave her the best vehicle procurable. It has been dignified by the name of "Miss Nightingale's Carriage," but was, in fact, a hooded baggage-car without springs.[196] Some time later M. Soyer identified the vehicle among other "Crimean effects" which were on sale at Southampton. It was shown at the Victorian Era Exhibition forty years later,[197] and is still preserved at Lea Hurst. [195] Sir William Montagu Scott McMurdo (1819-94); K.C.B. 1881. Miss Nightingale had a very high opinion of his services in the Crimea, and Sidney Herbert appointed him Inspector-General of the Volunteers (see Miss Nightingale's Letter on the Volunteers, 1861). [196] A woodcut of it appeared in the _Illustrated London News_, August 30, 1856. [197] See Vol. II. p. 409.