We soon had everything ship-shape in the old khan, which was converted into a well equipped hospital, containing at the outset three hundred beds. It was very different from the awful building that I had left behind in Plevna. The main ward of our Stafford House Hospital was a hundred feet long, with a width of sixty-five feet and a height of thirty feet. It was ventilated and lighted by means of large glass skylights, and warmed by two large stoves. This ward contained ninety-eight beds, and there was another large one containing sixty-two beds, while smaller rooms, opening off these large ones, provided accommodation for six or eight patients each, the total number of patients when I took over control being three hundred. We had an operating-room, a storeroom, and all the necessary offices. In the main wards the scene was almost picturesque, if any hospital ever could be picturesque; for the place was scrupulously clean, and the beds were dressed with Persian quilts, bright with the most gorgeous colours. As the midday sunbeams poured in through the skylights overhead, they lit up the scarlets and the greens, the cobalt blues and lemon yellows, the deep crimson of the rose, the pink of the geranium, and the purple of the violet, until the whole place looked like an immense garden full of flowers. But against this background of brilliant colours the white, drawn faces of the wounded soldiers stood out in pitiful contrast, and the gay hues only threw into still stronger relief the ghastly sufferings. At first we had no cases of sickness, and none but wounded men to treat. Our death-rate was low--in the first week we only had six deaths out of three hundred patients, and we sent thirty men out cured to rejoin their regiments. After the hideous experiences in Plevna, this state of things was a blessed relief, and we became quite light-hearted. But before I left Erzeroum I had seen sufferings and horrors before which the sufferings and horrors of the Plevna hospital paled into insignificance. The first sign of coming trouble was the discovery one morning of a case of genuine typhus and several cases of typhoid. These we sent away at once to the medical central hospital, as we took over our hospital with the stipulation that we were to treat only wounded cases. But that solitary case of typhus worried me a good deal, and it seemed to presage with dreadful certainty the mischief that was to come. CHAPTER XIII. A BELEAGUERED CITY.