coolness, and intelligence of Captain Lyons, of the Miranda, whose premature fate, following instantaneously on his brilliant successes, awoke so deep a sympathy in Queen and nation, this route has long been closed, as the Russians have already learned to their cost, in their increased and increasing commissariat difficulties.
The second peninsula is that of Kertch, on the East, which is also associated with one of the most successful of our naval exploits, and is historically memorable as the seat, for eight centuries, of the kingdom of the Bosphorus.
The third minor peninsula, the Chersonesus Heracleotica of the ancients, situate on the South-west coast, and bounded by the sea and by a line drawn from the upper end of the harbour of Sebastopol to the head of that at Balaklava, and in part by the River Tchernaya, " includes the Southern side of Sebastopol, the camps, batteries, and trenches, of the Allies before it, and the ground occupied by their army of observation." It thus comprises the theatre of a siege which carries back the imagination to that of Troy, and the hard contested battle-fields of Balaklava, Inkermann, and the Tchernaya; its soil is enriched with some of the most precious blood of England, France, and Sardinia, and its time-honoured and classic associations augmented by memories of more recent date, but of no less sacred and heroic character. It is with this portion of the Crimea that our present narrative will henceforth have chiefly to deal, since, with the exception of the battle of the Alma and the flank march to Balaklava, aU the great events of the campaign connected with this series of Mr. Simpson's drawings occurred there. These drawings, whose wonderful accuracy will render them as indispensable to the future historian of the War as their graphic and life-like delineations make them a sine qua non to all who are now interested in it (and who is not?), will give a far more pleasing and easily realised idea of the character and features of this part of the country than any verbal description, however elaborate; and to them the reader is accordingly referred.
With regard to the Russian resources in men and materiel^ the data are still insufficient on which to form a correct opinion; and, amidst many conflicting statements, it becomes a very difficult task to evolve the exact truth. The results of the siege have, however, proved that it would not be easy to overstate the vast accumulation of materiel which the course of years, and the constant care and prevision of the late Emperor, had garnered in Sebastopol. During these protracted perations every gun in the place, and their name is Legion, must have been renewed more than once; and only those w^ho have beheld the pavement of the " Valley of the Shadow of Death " can thoroughly realise the enormous quantities of shot and shell which have been vomited from those iron mouths towards the trenches and batteries of the Allies; nor can the stock of provisions have fallen far short of a similar scale. When we reflect on the difficulties which attended our own landtransport during the winter, over a distance never exceeding seven miles, it is almost impossible to doubt that Liprandi's army must have frequently been compelled to draw upon the resources of Sebastopol, which must also have been largely drained by the garrison itself. The forces at the disposal of Prince Menschikoff, in the whole of the Crimea, were estimated, at the time of the expedition, according to Sir James Graham's statement before the Sebastopol Committee, at 70,000 men, of whom 40,000 were supposed to form the g.'irrison of the place. This was in all probability a tolerably accurate computation, — but the numbers were largely increased before the battle of Inkermann, — and this enormous force had to depend for subsistence on provisions brought by way of Kertch or Perekop, across snow -covered steppes, and by animals who must have perished by thousands on the way, or to eke out the deficiency by what could be affi)rded them from the town. One of these sources of supply, and that one by far the most commodious and important, has since been stopped; but, though there are now symptoms of distress, at the end of twelve months Sebastopol was not reduced to starvation, and there were, at least, two Russian armies in the field. Gigantic, indeed, then, must have been the provision which could withstand so constant and so vast a demand; and the fact of the scale on which these preparations had been made, proves how well aware were the Russians of the colossal nature of the strife into which their reckless ambition was certain in the end to plunge the world.