72 Ten Years of iny Life. 



tents, which gave shelter against the rain and permitted the 

 perfect airing so necessary to i^cople wounded or ill with typhoid 

 fever. Though placed now and then on straw or corn husks 

 on the ground, they generally lay on the portable bedsteads, 

 called stretchers. In the French war we often regretted the 

 absence of such tents. 



The many navigable rivers m America were also a great 

 convenience, and o£ the greatest importance in the war. There 

 are very few rivers in Germany or France v/hich would carry 

 such large transport steamers as I saw in America, even on 

 streams of which the names are scarcely known in Europe. 

 These rivers were highly important for the transportati'^n of 

 tT*oops and provisions, and they were so for sanitary purposes. 

 Large steamers, such as run on the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, 

 Hudson, or on the Northern Lakes, were arranged as floating 

 hospitals, offering all the conveniences of a great hotel. It is 

 difficult to give Germans an idea of such ships, for thousands 

 of them have never seen the sea, and think a Rhine steamer a 

 most wonderful concern. What would they say to ships four 

 or five hundred feet long, on which stand two-storied buildings 

 rerching nearly from one end to the other, surrounded with 

 verandas and balconies, containing hundreds of small bed- 

 rooms, and halls in which three or four hundred people can 

 sit very comfortably to dinner ? Where the shipping on such 

 rivers is interrupted by rapids or rocks the practical Americans 

 have built canals alongside of them, as in the case for instance 

 with the Upper Potomac and the Suspuehjinnah, and many 

 other rivers. 



What revolted m.e frequently in the French war was the 

 manner in which the dead were treated on the battle-fields. 

 To a philosophical mind it may seem very indifferent what is 

 done with the cast-off coat of our soul ; it is, I think, without 

 doubt indifferent to the dead, but the surviving are not all 

 philosophers, and have a reverence for their dead, and not the 

 form of their soul, but that of their body remains in their 

 memory. It is true that the nations who^e state of civilisation 

 is still on a very low step make the most of their dead, but 

 civilised as the Germans may be, I do not think that it is in- 

 different to the mothers amongst them whether the bodies of 

 their beloved children are treated as unceremoniously as cattle. 

 Even if it speaks unfavorably lor the civilisation of the Ameii- 



