A tour made by Major Hammersley, Captain Brooke, and Mr. St. Clair in the north of the Crimea demonstrated the enormous difficulties experienced by the Russians in maintaining their position. It satisfied every one, that if the Allies had advanced after the 8th of September, and followed the enemy, the Russian army of the South must have surrenderad, and Cherson, Berislaff, Nicholaieff, and Odessa would have been seriously menaced. All the north side, its guns, its garrison, all the materiel, all the provisions and magazines of Bakshiserai and Simpheropol, must have fallen into our hands, and about 60,000 or 70,000 men. "But why so? " some one will ask. "Could they not have got away?" Most certainly not. There are but two outlets from the Crimea; the first is by the isthmus at Perekop, the second is by the bridge over the Putrid Sea at Tchongar. The approaches to these outlets lie over waterless, foodless' plateaux, broken up by deep salt lakes. The wells, which yield a scanty supply of disagreeable water, are profound pits, of which the shallowest is 100 feet, and many are as deep as 150 to 250 feet. They are scattered over the country very sparsely, and they contain but little water. Under such circumstances, the Russians were obliged to send in their reinforcements by driblets, to carry water whenever they wanted to push on a single regiment. It would have been impossible for them to have marched a body of 5,000 or 6,000 men by either of those routes in dry weather. Imagine how helpless would have been
* A very accurate and interesting memorial has been written by Captain Brine, R.E., illustrated with admirable sketches by Major the Hon. E. Colborne, and published by Ackerman, Regent Street.
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the position of an army of 70,000 or 80,000 men of all arms, hemmed in by this salt prairie, and by the waters of the Sivasb, nnder a burning sun, and pressed by a victorious enemy. They could not have marched, nor, if they had once got away, could we have pursued; but no General in his senses would have risked the entire destruction of his army by retreating under circumstances like those from the south of the Crimea; and the Russians confessed their position was hopeless had they been attacked and beaten at any point along the line.
When our travellers arrived at Perekop, they observed that the defences consisted of redoubts directed against an advance from Russia Proper, and not from the south of the Crimea; they made a similar discovery at Tchongar, where the tete-de-pont was strongly fortified towards the north, and was open towards the south. These works were mostly thrown up at the time of the Kinburn expedition, which the Russians very naturally believed to be the precursor of an immediate operation against the Crimea, to which they looked with very great apprehension.
General Yon Wrangel received them with much hospitality and kindness at Perekop. The old Tartar citadel and the remains of a wall and parapet were visible; but the defences of the place were very weak; water was very scarce, and very bad; but the climate is healthy, except when the wind blows across the Sivash. No less than 25,000 men died of sickness at and near Perekop. There were large hospitals and ambulances, but they were far too small for the demands upon them, and many convoys had to be sent on to Cherson, Berislaff and Nicholaieff. At Tchongar the tourists were refused permission to pass the bridge, and that refusal was confirmed by the General commanding at Genitchi, to whom they applied to rescind the decision of his subordinate. They examined the bridge, however, and found it was well and substantially built of wood. The waters of the Sivash are as clear as crystal, and are so intensely bitter that no fish frequent them except small flounders. The bottom consists of a stratum of fine shells, of two or three inches in thickness, just sufficient to bear a man treading lightly upon it, but if one presses with all his weight this crust breaks, and up rushes black mud and stinking gas, probably sulphuretted hydrogen.