This picture forms the pendant to that entitled " A Quiet Day in the Batteries," which has already been noticed. A full moon pours its broad calm radiance on the landscape, shedding "beauty and deep softness" even on the stern interior of a battery. The brightness of the atmosphere renders ahke impossible the stealthy sortie of the garrison and the furtive labours of the working party, and the guns, which have neither friend to shelter nor foe to repel, have stilled for a moment their iron-throated clamours, and left free utterance to the truer and holier, but too often unheard, " voices of the night." Leaning against the traverses, or stretched on the ground, with a gun -platform for a pillow, the defenders of the work are enjoying a repose troubled by no dreams of coining strife; a group of officers, amongst whom, wrapped in his ample capote, is the field-officer of the night, are whiling away the long hours in pleasant chat; while a few of the more wakeful among the men are seated round the cheerful blaze of a fire, enjoying the benign influence of the soothing weed, or absorbed in reveries of which the distant home and the absent-loved are the everrecurring theme.
Sebastopol is not visible, but the direction in which the guns are pointed sufficiently hints its position. The gun on the right is distinguished
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as No. 1 gun, No. 2 battery siege train; it weighs 56 cwt. and throws an 8-inch shot; but its powers are in abeyance, and the sand-bag with which the breech is muffled is emblematic of the lull in hostilities. Cape Chersonese is seen in the distance; and the silver-white waters of the bay, studded with ships lying peacefully at anchor, complete and sustain the unbroken tranquillity of the scene.
This is a companion picture to that of the First Division Camp, and, like it, requires but little explanation. The main features of the landscape are the same, relieved, however, by the bold forms of the high range of hills in the background. The camp of the First Division is now seen in the distance, on the far edge of the plateau, and between it and the windmill is a camp of Zouaves. This windmill was one of the most conspicuous landmarks in the position, and of inestimable value to a bewildered wanderer amongst the mazes of tents which stretched for miles away in every direction, with a provoking uniformity not unfrequently puzzling to the " oldest inhabitants" of the camps. Not the least comfortless among the numerous sufferers from the rigour of winter in this Ishmaelitish form of existence were the wretched horses, which may be seen picketed in various directions amongst the tents, and exposed to the bitterest weather, with but scanty clothing at the best, and too often with none whatever. Of the results of this al fresco stabling, with the thermometer below zero, we have already had a striking illustration. At this period many attempts at huts were beginning to spring up about the camp, but want of transport and the long distance from Balaklava rendered it almost impossible to bring up the wood for roofing them; and tents, as the reader will perceive, were still in a decided majority.
There are few amongst the British public who have not visited Chobham or Aldershot, and who are not, therefore, famihar with the picturesque appearance presented by a " canvas town " on a fine day, and beneath a summer sky. A smaller number, perhaps, are acquainted with the pecu-
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THE RUINS OF INKERMANN, AND CITY OP CAVERNS 93
liarly unreal and phantasmagoric aspect of tents at night before the lights are extinguished j but only those who have witnessed it can form an idea of the dreary and desolate-looking objects they become with a leaden sky above them, and the snow lying thickly around. In recalling the misery of which this gloomy exterior was but the type, we may well congratulate ourselves on the fair prospect of winter quarters this year for our gallant Army in the Crimea.
Inkermann, or, as its name imports, the City of Caverns, has long furnished material for antiquarian discussions, the merits of which are not even in the present day decided.
" At the distance of a quarter of a mile across the valley," says Mr, RusseU, " the sides of the mountains, opposite to the ridge of the plateau on which our camp stands, rise abruptly in sheer walls of rock, slab after slab, to the height of 1200 or 1500 feet. A road winds among those massive precipices up to the ruins of Inkermann — a city of the dead, and gone, and unknown — where houses, and pillared mansions, and temples, have been hewn out of the face of the solid rock by a generation whose very name the most daring antiquaries have not guessed at."