I was riding from head-quarters, reading my letters, and had just reached the hill, or elevated part of the plateau, at the time, and happened to be looking in the very direction of the park when the explosion took place. The phenomena were so startling as to tal^e away one's breath. Neither pen nor pencil could describe them. The earth shook. The strongest houses rocked to and fro. Men felt as if the very ground upon which they stood was convulsed by an earthquake. The impression of these few moments can never be eradicated. One's confidence in the stability of the very earth was staggered. Suppositos incedimus ignes. What part of the camp was safe after such a catastrophe? The rush of fire, smoke, and iron, in one great pillar, attained a height I dare not estimate, and then seemed to shoot out like a tree, which overshadowed half the camp on the right, and rained down missiles upon it. The colour of the pillar was dark grey, flushed with red, but it was pitted all over with white puffs of smoke, which marked the explosions of the shells. It retained the shape of a fir-tree for nearly a minute, and then the sides began to swell out and the overhanging canopy to expand and twist about in prodigious wreaths of smoke, which flew out to the right and left, and let drop, as it were from solution in its embrace, a precipitate of shells, carcasses, and iron projectiles. The noise was terrible; and when the shells began to explode, the din was like the opening crash of one of the great cannonades or bombardments of the siege. I clapped spurs to my horse and rode off as hard as I could towards the spot as soon as my ears had recovered the shock. As I rode along I could see thousands hurrying away from the place, and thousands hastening to it. The smoke became black; the fire had caught the huts and tents. General Windham overtook me, riding from head-quarters as hard as he could go. He was ignorant of the cause and locality of the explosion, and was under the impression that it was one of the French redoubts. Sir Richard Airey followed close after him, and General Codrington rode towards the fire a few minutes afterwards.
On arriving close to the place, I saw that the ground had been torn up in all directions. The fragments of shell were still smoking, and shells were bursting around in most unpleasant proximity. Captain Piggott, in a short time, came up with the ambulances at a gallop, and urged the horses through the flames and amid the exploding shell in order to render assistance to the sufferers; and in this arduous duty he was manfully and courageously assisted by Surgeons Alexander, Muir, Mouat, and others. As we were all looking on at the raging fire, an alarm spread that the mill used as a powder magazine had caught fire. A regular panic ensued — horses and men tore like a storm through the camp of the Second Division. I did not escape the contagion, but, at my servant's solicitation, mounted my horse, and rode off like the rest. I soon came up to Colonel Percy Herbert, who was actively engaged in trying to get the men of his Division under arms, but he told me he could find neither drummers, buglers, officers, nor sergeants. The panic was soon over. The mill did not catch, though the roof and doors and windows were blown in. The officers, in the most devoted way, stripped, and placed 300 wet blankets over the powder inside just as the flames were raging behind the mill and at the side of it within 200 yards. Hundreds of rockets rushed hissing and bursting through the air, sheets of flame shot up from exploding powder, carcasses glared out fiercely through black clouds of smoke, and shells burst, tossing high in air burning beams of wood and showers of sparks, and boxes of small-arm ammunition exploded with a rattling report like musketry, and flew about in little balls of fire.
My reading in military matters is not sufficient to enable me to say, with any confidence, that there never was so terrible an explosion; but having witnessed and heard the explosions at Pavlovskaia and Kertch, at Oczakoff, of the French magazines on the 17th of October, 1854, and of the Russian forts on the 9th of September, 1855, I must say that, in volume of sound, in appalling effect, they were far exceeded in vehemence and grandeur by this tremendously abrupt and startling catastrophe. The quantity of Russian powder which went up was about 1,700 barrels, and there were about 800 barrels of French powder exploded in the three magazines. Each barrel contained about 1001b. weight of gunpowder, so that the total quantity which furnished the elements of this prodigious combustion cannot have been less than 250,0001b. But in addition to that enormous mass of powder there were vast mounds of shell, carcasses, rockets, and small-arm ammunition, contributing to the intensity and violence of the fiery blast.