" They were exposed to an oblique fire from the batteries on the hills on both sides, as well as to a direct fire of musketry. Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing as they rode up to the guns and dashed between them, cutting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through the guns, as I have said; to our delight we saw them returning, after breaking through a column of Eussian infanti-y, and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the battery on the hill swept them down, scattered and broken as they were. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale— demi-gods could not have done what we had failed to do. At the very moment when they were about to retreat, an enormous mass of Lancers was hurled on their flank. Colonel Shewell, of the 8th Hussars, saw the danger, and rode his few men straight at them, cutting his way through with fearful loss. The other regiments turned and engaged in a desperate encounter. With courage too great almost for credence, they were breaking their way through the columns which enveloped them, when there took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of civilised nations. The Eussian gunners, when the storm of cavalry passed, returned to their guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled with the troopers who had just ridden over them, and, to the eternal disgrace of the Eussian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and canister on the mass of struggling men and horses, mingling friend and foe' in one common ruin. It was as much as our Heavy Cavalry Brigade could do to cover the retreat of the miserable remnants of that band of heroes, as they returned to the place they had so lately quitted in all the pride of life. At thirty-five minutes past eleven not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of these bloody Muscovite guns."
PLATE XVI.
HUTS AND WAEM CLOTHING FOE THE AEMY.
The road from Balaklava to the front, in another phase of its Protean existence. The Commissariat and its difficulties seem alike to have disappeared, the mud has given place to snow, and the leaden sky overhead is painfully suggestive that there is, in the words of the immortal Mr. Swiveller, "plenty more where that came from." The landscape is dreary enough in all conscience, and the thought of men passing their nights in such weather in the trenches, with no warmer couch than a snow-drift, and no other roof than the dull and gloomy canopy of heaven, may well awaken a feeling of self-reproach
THE EAST.
in the Sybarites at home, who shiver before the ruddy glow of a sea-coal fire, and starve beneath piles of blankets heaped Pelion on Ossa. But more cheering reflections arise as we watch that long line of horse and foot men, of mules and beasts of burden, struggling with and staggering under the weight of an unwonted load, almost exceeding their diminished powers of endurance, yet far too precious to be rashly cast away. For the warm clothing so " long looked for" has "come at last"— the terrible disaster involved in the distressing fate of the Prince is at length retrieved — the hardy sons of Britain, whose iron constitutions have borne up against sickness and exposure, shall yet experience warmth and comfort, of which they had long despaired. Slowly, partially, and scantily indeed are the first supplies distributed; for awhile even the hospitals are but shabbily supplied; frost-bite must still claim its victims; and the hardships of winter must drag on a lingering existence ere they vanish for ever in the genial presence of spring. But the worst is over. " Hambre que cspera hartura," says the Spanish proverb, "no es hamhre." Hunger, with a leg of mutton in the perspective, is hunger no more; and many a poor fellow, who looked with eyes of envy on his more fortunate and warmly clad comrade, may have derived support and courage under delay and disappointment from the thought that his own turn was not far distant, and that his weary warfare with the elements was well-nigh ended.
This picture, with its double tale of sufferings gone by and of present succour and relief, has also, like all human scenes, its grotesque side. This is furnished by the strange and uncouth appearance of the men and animals, whose identity is obscured, confused, and at times annihilated by the vast accumulations of skins and furs under which they labour on the road. " This drawing," says Mr. Simpson, " is no caricature of life as it appeared during the winter season in the Crimea. The strange-looking animal in the foreground is a mule laden with buffalo hides; behind which is a soldier bearing sheep-skin cloaks; the Hussar behind him is one of Lord Cardigan's regiment.