a holiday, and knew nothing of baking; and their bread came out of the oven too heavy, or sour, or sticky, or burnt, to be eaten.  As scurvy spread and deepened, the doctors made eager demands on Government for lime-juice, and more lime-juice.  Government had sent plenty of lime-juice; but it was somehow neglected among the stores for twenty-four days when it was most wanted, as was the supply of rice for six weeks when dysentery was raging.  All the time, the truth was, as was acknowledged afterwards, that the thing really wanted was good food.  The lime-juice was a medicine, a specific; but it could be of no real use till the frame was nourished with proper food.

When flour, and preserved vegetables, and fresh meat were served out, and there were coffee-mills all through the camp, the men were still unable to benefit by the change as their allies did.  They could grind and make their coffee; but they were still without good fresh bread and soup.  They despised the preserved vegetables, not believing that those little cakes could do them any good.  When they learned at last how two ounces of those little cakes were equal, when well cooked, to eight ounces of fresh vegetables, and just as profitable for a stew or with their meat, they duly prized them, and during the final healthy period those pressed vegetables were regarded in the camp as a necessary of life.  By that time, Soyer’s zeal had introduced good cookery into the camp.  Roads were made by which supplies were continually arriving.  Fresh meat abounded; and it was brought in on its own legs, so that it was certain that beef was beef, and mutton mutton, instead of goat’s flesh being substituted, as in Bulgaria.  By that time it was discovered that the most lavish orders at home and the profusest expenditure by the commissariat will not feed and clothe an army in a foreign country, unless there is some agency, working between the commissariat and the soldiers, to take care that the food is actually in their hands in an eatable form, and the clothes on their backs.

It is for American soldiers to judge how much of this applies to their case.  The great majority of the volunteers must be handy, self-helping men; and bands of citizens from the same towns or villages must be disposed and accustomed to concerted action; but cooking is probably the last thing they have any of them turned their hand to.  Much depends on the source of their food-supply.  I fear they live on the country they are in,—­at least, when in the enemy’s country.  This is very easy living, certainly.  To shoot pigs or fowls in road or yard is one way of getting fresh meat, as ravaging gardens is a short way of feasting on vegetables.  But supposing the forces fed from a regular commissariat department, is there anything to be learned from the Crimean campaigns?