in India, though a large portion of the French troops had made campaigns in Algeria, and though the Russians hao! for years carried on a desultory war in Circassia, yet the long European peace had left them all with little except a traditional knowledge of civilised war. No change of method had taken place since the Napoleonic era. But the British and French had both abandoned the musket for the rifle, ours being the Minie ; both it and the French arm were muzzleloaders ; some Russian regiments had a rifle, but a large proportion of them were still armed with the old brass-bound musket which had served them throughout the century ; the artillery also of all remained as before.
As the fleets sailed eastward from Varna across the Black Sea, their course was crossed at right angles by the coast on which they were to land, and of which they might almost be said to know as little as knight-errants, heroes of the romances beloved by Don Quixote, knew of the dim, enchanted region where, amid vague perils, and trusting much to happy chance, they were to seek and destroy some predatory giant.
Crim Tartary, better known now as the Crimea, forms part of the Government of Taurida, a province of Southern Russia. From the coast of the Euxine it stretches southward, as an extensive peninsula, into the midst of that sea. Its neck is the Isthmus of Perekop, five miles wide, and its length from thence to Balaklava at its southern end is, in direct line, 120 miles. All the northern and middle portion is a flat and arid steppe,
Its Products and Population. 37
where are sprinkled at wide intervals small villages inhabited by Tartars, whose possessions are flocks and herds ; but the remaining and southern encUof the peninsula is different indeed in aspect, and in climate. Here begins a mountain region sheltering from the northern blasts the slopes and hollows, the lesser hills of which, covered with pine and oak, enclose valleys of bounteous fertility. Multitudes of wild flowers spring up amid the tall grass ; the fig, the olive, the pomegranate and the orange flourish, and the vine is cultivated with success on the southern slopes. The seaward end runs out into capes resting upon high cliffs, and is indented on its western side by the deep and sheltered harbour of Sebastopol, which, as the chief and indeed only large and safe harbour of the Black Sea, had by the work of generations been converted into a great arsenal and dockyard, defended towards the sea by strong forts, and affording ample anchorage for the Black Sea fleet, and around these works had sprung up a city. The area of the whole peninsula is nearly twice that of Yorkshire, and its population at the time of the invasion numbered something short of 200,000. Going along the road from Sebastopol to Perekop, the first considerable town reached, sixteen miles distant, is Bakshisarai, " the Garden Pavilion," and in another sixteen miles, where the road quits the hills for the steppe, is Simpheropol, the nominal capital. The part of the country with which the reader has at present to do is included in a parallelogram, one side of which is a line outside the western coast from Eupatoria to the level of Balaklava, and the
38 The Coast reconnoitered.
opposite side passes through the hill region, south from Simpheropol to the sea.
In this region the mountains have subsided into hill ranges of some 400 feet high, and through these the watershed pours five streams flowing westward into the Black Sea, all of which formed features in the campaign. The first of these is the muddy rivulet called the Bulganak ; seven miles south of it is the valley of the Alma (Apple River) ; another space of seven miles divides the Alma from the Katcha; four miles further the Belbek'is reached ; and five miles from that the Tchernaya, northwesterly in its course, flows into and forms the head of the harbour of Sebastopol.