Soaked by torrents of rain, the badly -made roads to the camps soon became rotten and impassable for wheels, and the daily rations of the army had to be carried up by mules and pack-horses, and, in too many instances, by the men themselves, who, after twenty-four hours' service in the muddy ditches, which the trenches had now become, frequently found themselves compelled, by the stern necessity of procuring food, to trudge down to Balaklava and back again, a distance of from ten to fourteen miles, ere they could hope for rest or refreshment. Nor did their miseries end here. The brushwood, with which the ground occupied by our troops was originally covered, had gradually but rapidly been used up to the last branch to furnish fuel; and now that the supply was exhausted, the weary and worn-out soldier was driven to the laborious process of grubbing up the roots, which every day became more difficult to discover, before he could cook his breakfast. Incredible as it at first appeared, it is, nevertheless, now a well-authenticated fact, that for months the men were compelled to roast their own coffee, which, owing to some inexplicable mistake, or blind persistance in a ridiculous routine, continued to be issued to them green. The loss of the Prince had, by a mysterious Providence, deprived them of enormous stores of warm clothing at the moment when they were most imperiously required; and, if transport for food was difficult to obtain, and frequently not obtainable, it will be readily understood that the huts, which had arrived at Balaklava, had small chance *of reaching the fi'ont, where, even up to the return of Spring, it is notorious that the majority of the army was still under canvass. At times the weather was so excessively severe, the cold so insufferably bitter, that it was sadly but seriously discussed, by those exposed to it, whether a few more degrees of fall in the barometer would not suffice to destroy, to the last man, the remnant of the finest army that ever left these shores, and to exhibit, on a grander and more appalling scale, a repetition of the horrible disaster which attended the ill-fated expedition to Cabul. Cases of frost-
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bite, of the most aggravated description, now became common in the camp, and men actually paraded for duty with bare feet because they could no longer force them, swelled and maimed as they were, into their ragged and rotten shoes. It is not surprising that, under such a complication of wretchedness and suffering, sickness and mortality should have developed themselves to an alarming extent; that hospitals should have become crowded, and burial-grounds choked. But it will ever be a matter of grateful Avonder and enthusiastic admiration, that, surrounded by privation, disease, and death, the steadfast firmness of the troops was never shaken, that they still struggled on, and still bore up; " seldom," as it has been most happily expressed "desponding, and never despairing;" still looking to the one great end, and contemplating, with calmness and resignation, every eventuality but one, — that of the siege being raised. Such an idea, indeed, seems never even to have suggested itself, or, if suggested, to have been repelled with indignation as an alternative worse than the worst that could befal. During the months of December and January the distresses of the Army reached their climax. In spite of every effort on the part of the Conmiissariat, in spite of the cheerful assistance rendered by the French, who themselves suffered more severely than has ever been made known, but whose superiority in numbers enabled them to employ a considerable body of men to aid us in road-making, and in carrying up food and fuel to the front; in spite of the generosity and self-denial of the regimental officers, who in innumerable instances sacrificed their bat-horses Avith a similar object, and pinched themselves to contribute to the comfort of those under their command, hunger itself was now at times added to the long list of the soldier's miseries.
The hospitals at Scutari were rapidly fiUed with the gaunt forms of those who had fallen victims to the sword, to exposure, fatigue, and starvation; and, for a time, still more rapidly emptied by the exchange of the narrow bed of pain and fever, for a calmer and untroubled resting-place — the grave.