Varna is such a town as only could have been devised by a nomadic race aping the habits of civilized nations. If the lanes are not so ill-paved, so rugged, and so painful to the pedestrian as those of Gallipoli; if they are not so crooked and jagged and tortuous; if they are not so complicated and fantastically devious, it is only because nature has set the efforts of man at defiance, and has forbidden the Turk to render a town built upon a surface nearly level as unpleasant to perambulate as one founded on a hill-side. After a course of 100 miles, — by shores which remind you, when they can be seen through fogs and vapours, of the coast of Devonshire, and which stretch away on the western side of the Black Sea in undulating folds of greensward rising one above the other, or swell into hilly peaks, all covered with fine verdure, and natural plantations of the densest foliage, so that the scenery has a park-like and cultivated air, which is only belied by the search of the telescope, — the vessel bound to Varna rounds a promontory of moderate height on the left, and passing by an earthen fort perched on the summit, anchors in a semicircular bay about a mile and a half in length and two miles across, on the northern side of which is situated the town, so well known by its important relations with the history of the struggles between Russia and the Porte, and by its siege in 1829. The bay shoals up to the beach, at the apex of the semicircle formed by its shores, and the land is so low at that point that the fresh waters from the neighbouring hills form a large lake, which extends for many miles through the marsh lands and plains which run westward towards Shumla. Varna is built on a slightly elevated bank of sand on the verge of the sea, of such varying height that in some places the base of the wall around it is on a level with the water, and at others stand twenty or thirty feet above it. Below this bank are a series of plains inland, which spread all round the town till they are lost in the hills, which, dipping into the sea in an abrupt promontory on the north-east side, rise in terraces to the height of 700 or 800 feet at the distance of three miles from the town, and stretch away to the westward to meet the corresponding chain of hills on the southern extremities of the bay, thus enclosing the lake and plains between in a sort of natural wall, which is like all the rest of the country, covered with brushwood and small trees. A stone wall of ten feet high, painted white, and loopholed, is built all round the place; and some detached batteries, well provided with heavy guns, but not of much pretension as works of defence, have been erected in advance of the walls on the land side. On the sea-face four batteries are erected provided with heavy guns also — two of them of earthwork and gabions, the other two built with stone parapets and embrasures. Peering above these walls, in an irregular jungle of red-tiled roofs, are the houses{41} of the place, with a few minarets towering from the mosques above them. The angles of the work are irregular, but in most instances the walls are so constructed as to admit of a fair amount of flanking fire on an assaulting force. Nevertheless, a portion of the inner side of the bay, and other parts are equally accessible to the fire of batteries on the trifling hillocks around the town. The houses of the town are built of wood; it contains about 12,000 or 14,000 inhabitants, but there is more bustle, and animation, and life in the smallest hamlet in Dorsetshire, than here, unless one goes down to the landing place, or visits the bazaar, where the inhabitants flock for pleasure or business.
General Canrobert and staff reached Varna on the morning of the 2nd of June. He landed about mid-day, and after an extempore levee of the French officers on the beach, proceeded to call on Sir George Brown. The first thing they did when their Sappers arrived at Varna, before the English came up, was to break a gateway through the town wall, on its sea-face, to allow troops and provisions to be landed and sent off without a long detour. This proceeding drove the Pasha of the place almost deranged, and he died soon afterwards.
The cavalry sent by Omar Pasha was of infinite service in transporting provisions, horses, and cattle. The latter were wretchedly small and lean. A strong man could lift one of the beasts, and there was not so much meat on one of them as on a good English sheep. Food was good enough, and plentiful; a fowl could be had for seven piastres — 1s. 2d.; bread and meat were about the same price as in London; a turkey could be procured for half-a-crown; wine was dear, and not good; spirits as cheap as they were bad. Omar Pasha prohibited the export of grain from all the ports of Roumelia.