late last night. Though these night-scenes are part of our daily living, a fresh eye would find them dramatic. We are awakened in the dead of night by a sharp steam-whistle, and soon after feel ourselves clawed by little tugs on either side of our big ship, bringing off
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of the party during their stay in the Peninsula.
Hard, constant, and hurrying work were the rule, a day of comparative rest was the exception.
Dividing themselves into small parties of two or three, they boarded and supplied with the stores of the Commission, the boats which the Medical officers of the army had pressed into the service filled with wounded and sent without comfort, food or attendance, on their way to the hospitals in the vicinity of Fortress Monroe; superintended the shipping of patients on the steamers which returned from the North; took account of the stores needed by these boats and saw that they were sent on board; fitted up the new boats furnished to the Commission by the Quartermaster's orders; received, sorted and distributed the patients brought to the landing on freight-cars, according to orders; fed, cleansed, and gave medical aid and nursing to all of them, and selected nurses for those to be sent North; and when any great emergency came did their utmost to meet it.
The amount of work actually performed was very great; but it was performed in such a cheerful triumphant spirit, a spirit that rejoiced so heartily in doing something to aid the nation's defenders, in sacrificing everything that they might be saved, that it was robbed of half its irksomeness and gloom, and most of the zealous workers retained their health and vigor even in the miasmatic air of the bay and its estuaries.
Miss Wormeley, one of the transport corps, has supplied, partly from her own pen, and partly from that of Miss Georgiana Woolsey, one of her coworkers, some vivid pictures of their daily life, which, with her permission, we here reproduce from her volume on the “United States Sanitary Commission,” published in 1863.
“The last hundred patients were brought on board” (imagine any of the ships, it does not matter which)
1867.
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