The Tchernaya, or black water, derives its name from the sluggish character of its current — the Orientals, both Turks and Russians, being accustomed to denominate all slow and turbid streams black, while those which flow rapidly are called white. When Dr. Koch visited Sebastopol, he rowed up the Tchernaya, which he found near its mouth fully deserving of its name, as he states it to have been filled with muddy, marshy water, and choked up with reeds and various aquatic plants. The desperate conflict of the 16th of August, in which the Russians displayed more than their usual obstinacy and contempt of death, charged the dull colour of the waters with the bright red hues of human blood, and impeded the course of the current with the innumerable corpses of the devoted men whom the fierce legions of Gaul hurled back into the river from their vain and fruitless attack.
THE EAST.
PLATE XXI.
GRAVES AT THE HEAD OP THE HARBOUR OF BALAKLAVA.
War has its victims other than those who perish by the sword and bullet;
fever and cholera are ever in its train, and not unfrequently carry off those whose vocation is not in the battle-iield — for whom alive there are no lam-els,
and dead no glory. At Balaklava there are many graves whose tenants were of this class— men who perished at their post and in the faithful discharge of their duty, and who sacrificed their lives to their country as surely and not less heroically than the soldier who falls at the summit of the breach he has mounted, and with the shout of victory ringing in his ears. A few of these narrow resting-places are marked by unpretending head-stones, with a brief and simple inscription, but the majority are undistinguished, save in the memory of those who mourn their occupiers. It is at the funeral of one of the humbler of those whose remains lie thickly around, close to the calm basin whose waters are crowded with so many evidences of activity and life, that we are here invited to attend. The body of a sailor from one of the ships in the harbour has just been consigned to the earth, and, as the clergyman with bare head reads the impressive and pathetic burial service of the Church, the rough and often thoughtless children of the deep, whose bands have fashioned the grave to which they have borne their comrade, listen with bowed heads and with mingled feelings of reverence and sorrow to the solemn teachings of the holy rite. They think with full hearts of him who is gone from among them, whose earthly voyages are for ever ended, and who has attained the last and surest haven from the storms and shipwreck of the troubled sea of life. Or they muse, perhaps, on the fate which has laid him under a hostile soil and in a foreign land, far from the quiet village home and the peaceful churchyard, under whose green turf he may have fondly dreamed to seek repose in the evening of his days. Meanwhile the ceaseless bustle of the road hard by goes on, uninterrupted for a moment even by a scene like this; the living stream of energy and hope flows on careless of the dead who so near —
"Lie unknown and unnoticed. — Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them; Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and for ever; Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy; Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labours; Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey."
PLATE XXII.
SEBASTOPOL FROM THE SEA. Sketched from the Deck of H.M.S. " Sidon."
All our acquaintance with Sebastopol has hitherto been formed from various points in the Allied position on the South side, and the reader, who has accompanied us thus far in the series, must be tolerably conversant with the
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relative situations of the works of attack and defence, as well as with the general aspect of the town as seen from the plateau above it. We are here presented with a far different and more panoramic view. Taking our stand on the deck of the Sidnn, one of our ships of war engaged in the blockade of the port, we embrace at a glance the entrance to the harbour, the whole of the sea-ward defences, several of the forts on the North side, a considerable portion of the town, and of the heights immediately above it, and the lofty and magnificent chain of hills on the horizon, amongst which the Tchatir Dagli, or Tent Mountain, is conspicuous, from its size, its peculiar shape, and its isolated position.