It has been already mentioned that several battalions of Russian infantry crossed the Tchernaya, and threatened the rear of our position and our communication with Balaklava. Their bands could be heard playing at night by the travellers along the Balaklava road to the camp, but they " showed" but little during the day, and kept among the gorges and mountain passes through which the roads to Inkerman, Simpheropol, and the south-east of the Crimea wind towards the interior. The position we occupied was supposed by most people to be very strong. Our lines were formed by natural mountain slopes in the rear, along which the French had made entrenchments. Below these entrenchments, and very nearly in a right line across the valley beneath, were four conical hillocks, one rising above the other as they reached from our lines; the farthest, which joined the chain of mountains opposite to our ridges being named Canrobert's Hill, from the meeting there of that general with Lord Kaglan after the march to Balaklava. On the top of each of these hills the Turks had thrown up redoubts, each defended by 250 men, and armed with two or three heavy ship guns— lent by us to them, with one artilleryman in each redoubt to look after them. These hills crossed the valley of Balaklava at the distance of about two and a half miles from the town. Supposing the spectator, then, to take his stand on one of the heights forming the rear of our camp before Sebastopol, he would have seen the town of Balaklava, with its scanty shipping, its narrow strip of water, and its old forts, on his right hand; immediately below he would have beheld the valley and plain of coarse meadow land, occupied by our cavalry tents, and stretching from the base of the ridge on which he stood to the foot of the formidable heights at the other side; he would have seen the French trenches lined with Zouaves a few feet beneath, and distant from him, on the slope of the hill; a Turkish redoubt lower down, then another in the valley; then, in a line with it, some angular earthworks; then, in succession, the other two redoubts up to Canrobert's Hill.
At the distance of two or two and a half miles across the valley was an abrupt rocky mountain range covered with scanty brushwood here and there, or rising into barren pinnacles and plateaux of rock. In outline and appearance this portion of the landscape was wonderfully like the Trosachs. A patch of blue sea was caught in between the overhanging cliffs of Balaklava as they closed in the entrance to the harbour on the right. The camp of the Marines, pitched on the hill sides more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, was opposite to the spectator as his back was turned to Sebastopol and his right side towards Balaklava. On the road leading up the valley, close to the entrance of the town and beneath these hills, was the encampment of the 93rd Highlanders.
The cavalry lines were nearer to him below, and were some way in advance of the Highlanders, but nearer to the town than the Turkish redoubts. The valley was crossed here and there by small waves of land. On the left the hills and rocky mountain ranges gradually closed in towards the course of the Tchernaya, till, at three or four miles' distance from Balaklava, the valley was swallowed up in a mountain gorge and deep ravines, above which rose tier after tier of desolate whitish rock, garnished now and then by bits of scanty herbage, and spreading away towards the east and s.outh, where they attained the Alpine dimensions of the Tschatir Dagh. It was very easy for an enemy at the Belbek, or in command of the road of Mackenzie's farm, Inkerman, Simpheropol, or Bakschiserai, to debouch through these gorges at any time upon this plain from the neck of the valley, or to march from Sebastopol
CRIMEA.
by the Tchernaya, and to advance along it towards Balaklava, till checked by the Turkish redoubts on the southern side, or by the fire from the French works on the northern — i. e., the side which, in relation to the valley at Balaklava, formed the rear of our position. It was evident enough that Menschikoff and Gortschakofi had been feeling their way along this route for several days past, and very probably at night the Cossacks had crept up close to our pickets, which were not always as watchful as might be desired, and had observed the weakness of a position far too extended for our army to defend, and occupied by their despised enemy, the Turks.