Part 20

of the square there was a whitewashed house, which served as a barrack for the garrison. The walls only were left, and the smoke rose from the ashes of the roof and rafters inside the shell. Our men had fired it when they landed. A pool of brackish water was enclosed by the battery, which must have been the head-quarters of ague and misery. The sailors said the house swarmed with vermin, and had a horrible odour. Nothing was found in it but the universal black bread and some salt fish. The garrison, some 30 or 40 men probably, had employed themselves in a rude kind of agriculture, and farming or pasturage. Patches of ground were cleared here and there, and gave feeble indications that young potatoes were struggling for life beneath. Large ricks of reeds and coarse grass had been gathered round the battery, but were reduced to ashes. At the distance of a hundred yards from the battery there was another whitewashed house, or the shell of it, with similar signs of rural life about it, and an unhappy-looking cat trod gingerly among the hot embers, and mewed piteously in the course of her fruitless search for her old corner. The traces of herds of cattle, which were probably driven down from the mainland to feed on the grass round the salt marshes, were abundant. There was a track beaten into the semblance of a road over the sand from the battery to Taman, and it was covered with proofs of the precipitate flight of the garrison. Pieces of uniform, bags containing pieces of the universal black bread, strings of onions, old rags, empty sacks and bottles, were found along the track, and some of our party came upon a large chest, which was full of Government papers, stamps, custom-house and quarantine dockets, stamped paper for Imperial petitions and postage, books of tariff and customs in Russian, French, German, and English, and tables of port dues, which we took away to any amount. The heat of the sun, the vapours from the salt lakes, the mosquitoes, the vermin, and the odour, must have formed a terrible combination of misery in close barracks in the dog-days, and have rendered going out, staying in, lying down, and standing up, equally desperate and uncomfortable. The enemy relied considerably on the shallow water to save him from attack, but he was also prepared with heavy metal for gunboats, such as they were in the old war, and he was no doubt astonished when the large shot from the Lancaster guns began to fall upon his works from the small hulls of our despatch gunboats. One of the gunboats which lay off the fort — a mere hulk, without masts or cordage, of 150 tons burden, with embrasures through her sides on the deck for nine small guns — was found to be filled below with the most complete series of galvanic apparatus, attached to vessels full of powder, intended to explode on contact with the keel of a vessel. The submarine machines with their strange cups and exploding apparatus were recognized by Mr. Deane, the diver, as portions of the same kinds of instruments as those he employed in submarine operations. All were regularly numbered, and, as there was a break in the series, it afforded reason for believing that some of them were actually sunk; but the wires connecting them with the battery on board the ship were cut the night we forced the Straits, and the vessel itself was scuttled subsequently. There were many miles of wire, and the number of cells indicated a very powerful battery.