212 THE TROOPS.

for the poor Mogghrebeen who are refused admission, and severely censured the government for its cruelty; but I subsequently convinced myself that they have every reason to think themselves fortunate in not being received into those houses of slaughter. I procured, indeed, the bills of mortality of the regiment, and that of the corps of Mogghrebeen, compared the number of deaths amongst the three thousand troops of the line and the number of patients in the hospital, with those of the eight hundred men. Bedouins, who receive no medical relief, but cure themselves by domestic remedies, and found a result of twenty-seven per cent, of deaths among those killed in the hospital above the rate of mortality of the Mogghrebeen, who are left entirely to themselves. The Egyptian doctors and apothecaries, scarcely escaped from the elementary schools and placed on their own footing, treat the sick soldiers like cattle, never dream of diagnosis, prescribe whatever enters their heads, and care very little whether they save a man's life or murder him.

The hospital consists of a few hovels of clay, covered with a straw roofing ; they are ill-ventilated, and, in the wet season, the rain beats in upon the sick soldiers through the narrow windows, as they are not furnished with glass ; the cold nights, moreover, prove very severe trials, especially to those who are suffering from small-pox. The invalid lies on an angareb, and is left to his