the narrative of the campaign, it is worth describing, and, indeed, deserves notice from its picturesque beauty.

The valley, extending less than a mile from the gorge to the edge of the harbor, consists of gardens, meadows, and vineyards, the latter spreading a little way up the slopes on each side, till the hard rock forbids further cultivation. To the soldiers, long accustomed to eat their ration, fresh or salt, with the vegetable accompaniment of rice only, the vineyards, rich with clusters of ripe grapes, and the gardens, abounding overhead in apples and plums, and underfoot in pumpkins, tomatoes, and cabbages, all of excellent quality, appeared a paradise. The last-mentioned vegetable seemed especially agreeable to the military palate; and men of all arms of the service might be seen crossing the meadows, bearing on their shoulders long poles, on which whole rows of cabbages were impaled. Clusters of trees were intermingled with the spots of tillage, and a small stream, filling wells as it went, flowed along the meadows.

The harbor, a narrow inlet of the sea, winding between steep, barren heights, looked more like a fresh-water lake than an arm of the ocean, its mouth being concealed by an abrupt bend. I have seen something like it in the basins of the hills around Snowdon and Cader Idris. Except at the upper extremity, where it grows shallow, it shelves down to an extraordinary depth close to the shore. Its greatest width is about four hundred yards. In the course of the afternoon many ships came in, and ranged themselves side by side close to the south shore; the Agamemnon, towering above the rest, looked like the old puzzle of the reel in the bottle on a magnificent scale. The town, consisting of several narrow streets, stands on the south shore. The women, apprehensive of ill-treatment, had fled to the opposite side, but a staff officer crossing to assure them of safety, several boat-loads returned. Among them was a poor

lady, who told me in French that she had left Sebastopol only the day before, “to escape from the English." She submitted with exceeding good grace to the will of fate. Outside the guard-room were ranged in order the garrison to the number of eighty, with their venerable white-mustached commandant, prisoners of war, their arms being piled on the ground in front. Behind the town the rock slopes very steeply up to the wall and the towers at the top. These, built in rude times, and unrepaired for centuries, are absolutely useless for defense. The ruinous towers seem ready to topple over with the first footstep that ascends their broken stair; huge gaps yawn in the intervening walls, and the portions of the latter still standing show, by their thin parapet raised in front of a narrow path, that they were intended to resist an enemy who knew not the use of cannon. Nevertheless, at a distance these shattered stones wore an imposing and martial aspect, like an ancient suit of mail in an armory. There were no guns in the place, and the shells fired at us were from a mortar.

CHAPTER IX.

THE POSITION BEFORE SEBASTOPOL.

PILLAGE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY-POST-OFFICE-SPECULATORS-POSITION TAKEN UP BEFORE SEBASTOPOL-LANDING AND TRANSPORTATION OF SIEGE MATERIAL-DESCRIPTION OF THE ENVIRONS OF SEBASTOPOL-THE FRENCH CAMP-KAMIETH BAY-MONASTERY OF ST. GEORGE-RUSSIAN

PRIESTS-THE LANDSCAPE.

Most of the inhabitants of the valley had left the doors of their houses locked, as if they intended to return shortly, and expected to find things as they had left them. But, notwithstanding a general order (called forth by a great slaughter of turkeys, geese, and hens, with rifles and revolvers) that private property was to be respected, the houses in Kadukoi, the village at the entrance of the valley, were pillaged, and the doors, window-sashes, and rafters, for the most part, taken away for firewood. Some of the chiefs of the army took up their quarters in Balaklava; a post-office was established, and ships laden with siege materials were brought into the harbor, and ranged along the road in front of the houses, which the great depth of water close to the shore rendered almost as accessible and convenient as a wharf. Private speculators set up stores for the sale of grocery and clothing. Cargoes of the same articles were brought from Constantinople in the hired transports; and, in most instances, advantage was taken of the necessities of the troops to demand shamefully exorbitant prices.

Meantime the third, fourth, and light divisions were moved up to the heights of Sebastopol, and bivouacked within long cannon-range of the fortress. Some shot, pitched into their positions, forced them to move, on different occasions, a little to the rear; but, after a time, this ineffectual annoyance was, for the most part, discontinued, and at the beginning of October the rest of the allied army was moved up to the position it was intended to occupy, leaving the cavalry, a troop of horse-artillery, the 93d Regiment, and some marines and seamen, with guns from the fleet, to protect Balaklava.

For eight days the time was spent in landing and bringing up the materials and armament for the batteries of attack; and these being collected in sufficient numbers, the trenches were opened. This process was rendered very difficult and laborious by the soil, which was extremely rocky, and the progress made in it necessarily slow. As the whole interest of the campaign was now focused in this particular portion of the Crimea, it will be well to describe minutely the position which was soon to become the theater of a series of conflicts. These would be but imperfectly understood without a fuller idea than a map can give of the whole of the ground occupied by the allied army, and by the enemy.

Looking at a map of the Crimea, the reader will see that a valley extends from the inner end of the harbor of Sebastopol, where the Tchernaya runs into it, to that of Balaklava.

From the former harbor to the ruins of Inkermann the valley is from twelve to fifteen hundred yards wide; then the heights on either side separate till, at the point where the road to Mackenzie's Farm crosses the Tchernaya, they are nearly four miles asunder. Here a rounded cluster of gentle eminences divides the valley into two defiles: these, sweeping round from southeast to south-west, unite in one plain, which, traversed by small

hills, spreads to the gorge of the valley of Balaklava, and up to the heights right and left. Thus this valley, extending from one harbor to the other, forms a wide neck to a small peninsula of which Cape Kherson is the extremity, and on which the allied troops took their position. This peninsula, having steep cliffs at the sea-shore, consists of a high undulating plain, or range of plains, cleft by deep gullies that descend gradually to the basin in which lies Sebastopol. From a point opposite the ruins of Inkermann, to that where the road from Sebastopol descends to Balaklava, the range of heights bounding the valley is unbroken, except at a point easily defensible, where the Woronzoff road crosses it. But to the left of the point, opposite the ruins of Inkermann, the ground south of the Tchernaya slopes upward so gradually as to oppose no serious obstacle to the advance of troops to the heights, while the English division posted there was not on the ridge looking into the valley, but on another ridge in rear of it. Thus the space between the right of the allied batteries of attack and the heights opposite Inkermann was, while unintrenched, the weak point of the position. The ground. will be more minutely described in an account of the two actions of which it was the scene.

The harbor of Balaklava lies, as has been said, in a cleft between high and steep mountains. Beyond the inner extremity of the harbor this cleft continues itself for about half a mile in the small cultivated valley described in the last chapter.* A row of low isolated hills extends across the entrance of the valley and up the heights on each side, to the plains of the peninsula on the one hand, and to the cliffs above the sea on the other, thus forming a natural line of defensive posts. At about three thousand yards in front of these, on the plain, sweeping, as before described, from the valley of the Tchernaya, is another range of * See p. 59.