ABSTRACT
We proceeded on our road along the banks of the Dewna [Devna], and past the French and British camps, which extended far over the hills. It was in the lazy hour of the noonday heat. The little flags marking the encampment of each regiment drooped lazily on the staffs; soldiers in undress lay broiling in the sun; soldiers’ wives, carrying heavy jugs of water, came toiling up the hill, in attitudes of the greatest dejection, and with words of complaint, scarcely audible from their parched and blistered lips. Sore was the havoc which their first days of real campaigning had made with the proverbial neatness of the British females. The bonnets were gone—Heaven knows how long ago. Perhaps they got soaked in the violent rains which drenched the camp at Scutari, and then they were flung aside as worthless, half-rotten things, which only heat the head, but cannot protect it from sunshine, wind, or rain. These women, that worked or loitered about the camp at Dewna [Devna], went with their wretched, seedy-looking shawls drawn over their heads, their faces were flushed with the sun, and perhaps with strong drink, and their features wore that settled expression of suffering, discomfort, and despair, which at length, hardened and bronzed with depravity, stamps the face of the confirmed camp-followers. And what else can they become, these poor women, whom a cruel kindness has allowed to attach themselves to the baggage-train of the army? How they live and what they live on is a mystery to the world, to the soldiers, and perhaps to the women themselves, for it would appear that after giving them a passage out, the War-office has made no further provision for the support of the regimental women. They really and truly wander about, and know not where they shall lay their heads. It appears that no tents are provided for them, and that with the cavalry no provision is made for the transport of the women from place to place. They are a burden to themselves, to their husbands, and to the officers, and in a great many instances the poor creatures are hated and scouted by the soldiers generally. A great many of them are even now heartily tired of the life they have led, and the worse life which they foresee.
