Such are the main objects in the sketch; the occupations of the actors are much the same as on a "hot day;" the scene of their labours is identical, but night adds a wild fantastic horror to a spectacle which, even under the
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. ' 161
broad eye of day, is grand with the terrible majesty of destruction. At each discharge of the guns sheets of the most vivid flame shoot forth with inconceivable rapidity, illuminating with their fierce and lurid light the weatherbeaten forms and excited countenances of the men, penetrating into every nook and corner of the battery, and revealing with startling distinctness every accident of the ground, every detail of the colossal engines to which the red glow owes its birth. Miles away to the rear, like summer lightning, are seen the continuous flashes, brightening the sky from the horizon to the zenith, and accompanied by volumes of sound which echo from the hills, fill the air, and make the earth tremble. Shells traverse the heavens in all directions, rising with a gradual and protracted flight till their twinkling fuse seems lost among the very stars, whence they descend with unerring aim and everincreasing momentum to the devoted spot which they are to shatter and destroy. And now a pale pinky glow diffuses itself over the lower regions of the atmosphere, and, emerging from the centre of its soft nebulous light, rocket after rocket, from the French batteries on the left, hiss like fiery serpents through the air, darting forked tongues of flame into the heart of the distracted city; ere long a shed or a storehouse is ignited in the town, and as the fire, nourished by a redoubled shower of missiles from the batteries all along the line, spreads and intensifies, the lingering spectator by the Victoria Eedoubt, or on Cathcart's Hill, gazes on a scene whose brilliancy and beauty make him half unmindful of the dread meaning of sorrow and of death with which it is pregnant.
Gradually the storm of war dies away, the roar of the artillery is heard at longer intervals, the flashes intermit, the dark pall of smoke rolls slowly off to sea, and night resumes its long usurped attributes of silence and serenity.
PLATE XXXVI.
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. Oaves in the Wobonzoff Eoad, Behind the Twenty-one Gun Battery.
The so-called Valley of the Shadow of Death is a ravine lying in rear of our batteries, and into which the shot and shell from the Eussian works, directed at our batteries at too long a range, roll down. So vast has been the accumulation of these missiles, that an accurate description of it would appear to exceed the limits of credibility. This drawing was executed before the period of the second bombardment, and the number subsequent to that event was of course far greater. When the writer visited the Greenhill Battery in April, the whole extent of the road from side to side, for a very considerable distance, was literally paved with round-shot of all calibres, and with large and small fragments of shell, so that a horse had the greatest difficulty in picking his way through the labyrinth of obstacles thus presented.