WITHIN PLEVNA.

West Coast Times, Issue 2742, 15 January 1878, Page 3

WITHIN PLEVNA.

[WAR CORRESPONDENT OP LONDON TIMES.]

HORRORS Or THE HOSPITALS.

The first day of my residence in Plevna was spent in an inspection of the hospitals. Our party placed itself under the guidance ol Dr Ryan, a young English surgeon in the Turkish service, and set out for the chief building in which the wounded were bestowed. When we reached the main hospital we encountered a scene of horror which went quite unspeakably beyond all our previous experiences. I am authorised by the gentleman I accompanied to say that it is quite beyond the power of language to exaggerate their opinion of the deplorable and hideous condition of the wounded. If I could present you with an adequate picture of this dreadful place, I should produce a record which would dwarf Defoe's description of the lazar houses of the plague. But to attempt such a picture would be to shock decency by every line. I venture to believe the horrors of this home of filth and agony unique and singular. The chambers were large and lofty, and there were reasonable facultioi for ventilation, but the odours which filled every one of them were sickening past all words. Wounded men in every stage of disease and filth, and pain, littered the floors. The stagnaut miseries had overflowed iuto the corridors, and on the very stairs, and men with fractures forty days old lay unattended and helpless, side by side with cases of raving fever and confluent smallpox. If the reader will pain himself by thinking into what foul abandonment of nastinees one wounded man might fall if left absolutely unattended for a week, and will then multiply that imagination by a thousand, he may begin to conceive the 9tate of things which so horrified men accustomed to the sights of war and the ravage of dis-ease.

SAD AS A FUNEEAL.

The whole road was made sad from Plevna to Telis by such spectacles as belong properly to a war conducted on the principles which have governed the strife between Russia and Turkey. The pesautry of the country, gradually reassured of safety and learning to share the confidence of the soldiery in the prowess and good fortune of Osman, have been beginning to return to their homes. The fatigue and privation they endured tell — where it might be expected to tell— upon their women and children, and we scarcely passed a mile without witnessing a funeral* Whether it was the natural modesty of domestic grief, or whether it arose from a desire to hold the religious observance above their dead from Christian eyes I cannot tell, but the sight of some poor fragment of cloth suspended from the lower branches of trees, or held at arm's length before a party of mourners, became very sadly familiar to to us. We grew callous at last — so callous that a dead body touched us no more than a milestone might have done. Murder with violence awakened a languid interest. I do not know how I can more clearly and more terribly indicate the hoirors of the journey than by telling the simple truth about that one mntter — that the sight of the body of any poor wretch done to deaih by famine, or beaten to death by cruel stripes, or stabbed, or shot, or i-toned, awakened in the hearts and minds of half a dozen Englishmen no more than a momentary sensation of pity or of anger. We had grown accustomed to these things, and emotion had grown tired, and would not be stirred by any one of them.