5
ride was perfectly glorious and was made without accident. We arrived at La Rochelle at 11:30 and immediately went to call ont he
medical officer in charge of the hospital. We found very quickly that there was no hospital facilities for us at La Rochelle. In the
afternoon we visited the port at La Pallice. This is a perfectly beautiful port and well adapted for our purposes. It is the best
proposition that we have seen yet. The water supply which is obtained from La Rochelle is excellent. The hospital accommodations will
have to be developed entirely from this vicinity. We left at 5:00 o’clock in the evening for Bordeaux and arrived there at 10:30 that
night.
Bordeaux
On the morning of the 16th we immediately started for Bassens to inspect the docks there. They are fine. We pent all day examining
these docks and camp sites in the vicinity. The propositions is perfectly splendid and it will answer our purposes very well. The
water supply for Bassens and the camps will be taken from the Bordeauz supply, which is abundant and of excellent quality. In the
afternoon we visited the French instruction camps at Sorge. It is an admirable camp and we can do well to follow its model. On our way
home we visited Military Hospital No. 25 which contains a thousand beds. The French are willing to turn over one-half of this hospital
to us if we need it. These are the only fit hospital facilities immediately available for us. During our trip we visited a chateau
where we found the wife and sister and children. They must have been of immense wealth but the husbnad is an enlisted man in the
mounted regiment. This shows the way in which manpower is used in france. Saturday night we had our dinner at the Red Head Restaurant.
Sunday, June 17th, we left Bordeaux early in the morning for Pauillac. This is a small town with miserable sanitary arrangements but
about three miles from the place there is a nice dock. Close to this dock is a big iron mill, and this corporation has a perfectly
splendid artesian well which produces 17,500 gallons of water an hour. The place cannot be used for docking purposes except for
certain heavy material that might be carried from the States on the deck of ships. From this place we started to the mouth of the
Gironde River and the French officer told us that we were to take luncheon at Soulac. On the way to Soulac we passed through the
finest vineyard part of France. The country was perfectly beautiful and the vineyards were most interesting. We stopped at the chateau
Lafite, owened by one of the Rothchilds where the Lafite wine is produced. Their output is six hundred barrels per year. We were taken
thru the chateau which is never visited by the Rothchilds and then were given wine thirty years old. We were taken to the private
cellar where we saw large quantities of wine of the vintage