Few Englishmen, then, will be inclined to undervalue so careful and accurate a delineation of the ground which is enriched with the blood of their compatriots, of their friends, and of those nearer and dearer to them still, as is given in the drawing now under our consideration, and which illustrates, as nothing else could, the nature and conditions of the great battle, which so completely frustrated the well-grounded hopes of the Russians, and enabled the Allies to maintain the siege through the long and trying months of winter.
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The reader who has accompanied us thus far in our task will have no difficulty in recognising the two-gun battery on the slope of the hill above the ruins of Inkermann, which, with a slight breastwork, seen on the left of the picture, formed the only works of defence existing on the 5th of November.
He will as easily renew his acquaintance with the hills occupied by the Russian artillery, but which are now crested with a line of French batteries. Starting from the one immediately above the head of the harbour, the next to his left is the " Batterie du Clocheton;" then on the summit of Cossack, or Shell Hill, the eminence in the middle distance, he will perceive the "Batterie des Trois Nations;" lower down, and on the extreme left, the neatly-finished work, surrounding a group of tents, is called the " Batterie du Champ-de-Bataille." Sebastopol is again visible in the distance, and to the left of it, quite on the sky-line, the Pickethouse, a small building, from which an admirable view of the town was obtainable. We shall close these remarks by an extract from the letter of a gentleman who visited the field two or three months after the battle, and who thus describes his impressions: —
" Inmiediately after lunch we set out for Inkermann, and R *, most good-naturedly to gratify a wish of mine, started from the spot where the Grenadiers' Camp stood on the night preceding the 5th; and we followed the exact road taken by the Guards to the Sandbag Battery, when they first came up with the Russians.
" As he rehearsed the events of that incomparable day, amidst the scenes and on the very spots of ground where they took place, I was deeply impressed with the glorious, but sad and solemn memories, his narrative and the place so vividly called forth. There, on the very ground on which I stood, had occurred that fearful and thrice-repeated death-struggle, which ended in the final ejection of the Russians from the battery; and as I listened to the thrilling narrative of the heroic deeds of a handful of men, the most difficult thing to realise was that he who told the tale, and who had been an actor in the strife, should be there again a living and breathing man.
" We wandered together over every inch of the fatal field not interdicted to us by the French sentries, and at every step we stumbled on unmistakable relics of the tremendous slaughter inflicted on the Russians. Though every visitor to the field, and their name is Legion, bears away with him some memento, the ground is still thickly strewn with Russian
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pouches, great-coats, bayonet-hilts, cartridges, and accoutrements. Round shot and large fragments of shell are everywhere to be seen; and were the most inexperienced man suddenly placed amidst such a mass of these objects, he would need no cicerone to teU him, ' Here was a great battle fought.'
"One of the most striking peculiarities of the field is the constant recurrence of large patches of fresh earth. These are the graves where the countless myriads of the Czar, and the gallant sons of France and England, — fewer, yet all too many, — lie in their last sleep: and one could not contemplate them without speculating on the mysterious doom which compels men, who have no inborn hostility to each other, to this wholesale mutual slaughter.
" So it has ever been, so may it soon for ever cease to be, are the obvious reflection and the earnest prayer evoked by such a spectacle."