there may or may not be a list furnished from the ship; and the hospital surgeons inquire from bed to bed:  but in such a scene mistakes are sure to arise; and it was found, in fact, that there was always more or less variation between the numbers recorded as received or dead and the proper number.  No one could wonder at this who had for a moment looked upon the scene.  The poor fellows just arrived had perhaps not had their clothes off since they were wounded or were seized with cholera, and they were steeped in blood and filth, and swarming with vermin.  To obtain shirts and towels was hard work, because it had to be proved that they brought none with them.  They were laid on the floor in the corridors, as close as they could be packed, thus breathing and contaminating the air which was to have refreshed the wards within.  If laid upon so-called sheets, they entreated that the sheets might be taken away; for they were of coarse canvas, intolerable to the skin.  Before the miserable company could be fed, made clean, and treated by the surgeons, many were dead; and a too large proportion were never to leave the place more, though struggling for a time with death.  It was amidst such a scene that Florence Nightingale refused to despair of five men so desperately wounded as to be set aside by the surgeons.  The surgeons were right.  As they said, their time was but too little for the cases which were not hopeless.  And Florence Nightingale was right in finding time, if she could, to see whether there was really no chance.  She ascertained that these five were absolutely given over; and she and her assistants managed to attend to them through the night.  She cleaned and comforted them, and had spoonfuls of nourishment ready whenever they could be swallowed.  By the morning round of the surgeons, these men were ready to be operated upon; and they were all saved.

It would have been easier work at a later period.  Before many months were over, the place was ready for any number to be received in peace and quietness.  Instead of being carried from one place to another, because too many had been sent to one hospital and too few to another, the poor fellows were borne in the shortest and easiest way from the boat to their beds.  They were found eager for cleanliness; and presently they were clean accordingly, and lying on a good bed, between clean, soft sheets.  They did not come in scorbutic, like their predecessors; and they had no reason to dread hospital gangrene or fever.  Every floor and every pane in the windows was clean; and the air came in pure from the wide, empty corridors.  There was a change of linen whenever it was desired; and the shirts came back from the wash perfectly sweet and fresh.  The cleaning of the wards was done in the mornings, punctually, quickly, quietly, and thoroughly.  The doctors came round, attended by a nurse who received the orders, and was afterwards steady in the fulfilment of them.  The tables of the medicines of the day were hung up