On Monday, the 8th of October, a hot bright sun lighted up the round mirror of sea of which the fleet formed the centre. The sea gives a poor human creature a curious sense of his own importance. Wherever it is not broken in upon the land, it concedes to the vessel that has the honour of bearing him the position, or at least the sensation, of being the very centre and navel of the universe; if it has not already smitten him down on some cruel deck or wobegone cot, by its own peculiar protest against the arrogance of mankind. Although many big ships were near, and a great flotilla was moving all round the edges of our great circle, Her Majesty's ship Innominata appeared on this fine Monday morning to be the central point on a bright, flickering, shivering mirror, fringed by columns of smoke, or framed in by the masts of the distant fleet, fine as cobwebs on the edge of some ancient cheval glass of Louis Quatorze. The French fleet was away hull down on the port quarter, the grand, showy, big tricolors at the peak just topping the horizon, and the English fleet we could not see, for the reason assigned in the Critic, which I have never heard disputed, and shall therefore give in preference to any other.
About 8.30 something very like a three-decker under full sail, suffering terribly from refraction, came in view — a tall white column standing out of the sea. The haze gradually expanded as we advanced, and at last "land" was reported from the bows, and a hapless wight was despatched up into the clouds, to make any statements which might strike him as to the general configuration and geographical characteristics of the coast we were approaching, and to look out for " the British fleet at anchor," or afloat, as the case might be. I am not aware that his information was important or curious, and he only confirmed the profound observation of Sir Fretful Plagiary, after a lengthened sojourn among the sea-gulls; but, at about nine o'clock, even landsmen could make out " land " with good telescopes, and were obliged to abandon the secret joys
398 TIIE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO TTIE CRIMEA.
in which they had indulged at the disappointment of the Quartermaster, when he found that " a regular fog-bank " had been mistaken by him for terra firrna, and to admit that the " cloud," after all, was a " material guarantee " of the Czar, and belonged indeed to Russland. The canvas of the line-of-battle ship gradually resolved itself into a tall, snow-white pillar, some 200 feet above the level of the sea, which marks Cape Fontana, south of Odessa, and by degrees, as we rose the land, a white light-house, a guard-house, a white telegraph-house and station, white farmhouses, white villas embowered in green trees, pagodas, minarets, domes, and church spires appeared in view, and clustered together, till we had a daydream of Constantinople and Naples together with a dash of Boulogne in it, and Odessa came in sight. As I am neither a voluntary tourist, a universal gazetteer, nor a photographer, I shall not attempt to describe the city, which must, indeed, be well known to Englishmen, though few artists can do justice to it. These barbarous Russians have a rare knack of building graceful, light, cheerful, and clean-looking cities, which even the " Stones of Venice " might not utterly despise; and, if it be distance which lends enchantment to the view, they have at least the satisfaction, denied to more civilized people, of saying there is one point of view from which their cities win the senses.