We found the hospitals at Helena, if they may be called hospitals, in a dreadful condition. The Methodist and Baptist churches were crowded with very sick and severely wounded men.
There were very few cots in these two churches; most of the men were lying in the narrow pews, with the scant, uneven cushions for their beds. The weather was extremely hot, and flies swarmed over everybody and everything. The faces of some of the men, who were too helpless to keep up a continual fight with them, were black with swarms of hungry, buzzing flies. A few pieces of mosquito-bars were spread over the faces of some of the weakest patients; but, lying loose over their faces, they were of little advantage. Barrels in which had been shipped pickled pork now served as water-tanks, and were placed near the pulpit. They were filled every morning with the tepid water of the Mississippi River.
There was a barge of ice lying at the landing, brought down on purpose for the sick; but I could find no one who had authority to issue it, and so it was slowly melting away under the blaze of an August sun.
The men in charge were, however, willing to sell, and I had money to buy; and soon great crystal cakes of Northern ice were floating in every barrel of water in every hospital in Helena.
Acres of tents had been pitched by the roadside; and the mud, that in the winter had made the streets and roadways almost impassable, had now turned to dust, and every breeze sent it in clouds into the faces of the sick and wounded men.
There was another camp, called the Convalescent Camp, on the sandy beach of the river, the water being very low at the time. We found no convalescence there. The sun beat down on the white tents and the glistening sand till the heat was like a furnace.
Just back of these hospital tents and churches, there was a wide cypress swamp, stagnant and green and deadly.
The men were discouraged. “We have been left here to die;” “No man could recover in such a place as this,” was the verdict of all who had the strength and courage to express their feelings. The air was heavy with the deadly malaria, that ladened every breeze with poison.
It was good service to provide them with light hospital garments to take the place of their heavy soiled clothing, and with delicate food to take the place of coarse army rations; but, as one man said, “It’s no use, ladies; we are all doomed men. It is only a question of time—your efforts will only prolong our suffering; we are all the same as dead men.”
For two long days, through sun and dust, we went from hospital to hospital, till we, too, became hopeless.