How well and how rapidly they redeemed all their pledges it is unnecessary to dwell on; suffice it to say, that, within three short months from the sailing of the first of their ships, the railway was in full operation in conveying to the front enormous quantities of clothes, provisions, and munitions of war. It has been frequently supposed that the trucks were drawn by locomotive engines, but this is an error; the great steepness of the gradients not rendering this mode of traction desirable. At first the huge cart-horses, which may be seen similarly employed in England on railways in the course of construction, were alone used to drag the trains up — but it was soon found from experience that mules were easily taught the peculiar kind of action necessary to clear the sleepers and to get the train into motion, and they were consequently very extensively used in the service. Where the incline was beyond the powers of these animals, stationary engines, fitted with a sort of endless rope, supplied their place. In returning, the trucks descended merely propelled by their own momentum, and the peculiar rapid rattle of the wheels thus induced used to recall irresistibly the memory of home, and of scenes to which sounds like these were a familiar accompaniment.
The point of view selected by the artist is where the railway leaves the town of Balaklava, and passes the thickly-crowded harbour. The turbaned figures in the foreground to the left of the picture are Croats; those on the right are of the native Tartar population.
.
THE NEW WORKS AT THE SIEGE OF SEBASTOPOL ON THE RIGHT ATTACK,
FROM THE MORTAR BATTERY ON THE RIGHT OF GORDON'S BATTERY.
In the foreground of this picture are seen a 13 -inch and a 10-inch mortar; the former is just being "laid" for throwing a shell into the enemy's defences. Two artillerymen are carrying the ponderous missile to its destination, and further to the left another is engaged in filling a shell to be ready for the next discharge.
The ground is strewed with carcases, or empty shells, with ammunition barrels, and with the various implements employed in loading these vast engines of destruction.
In front of the Mortar Battery is a covered way connecting it with the new Eight-Gun Battery in advance of Gordon's Battery, and which is to be distinguished on the extreme left of the drawing. To the right of the covered way the reader wiU perceive another new battery in course of construction. In front of this the English advanced trenches skirt the edge of the dark ground in the middle distance, tiU they meet the French trenches at a point marked by the commencement of a series of small zigzags, which approach very closely to the advanced trenches of the enemy. At this point the ground between the two is covered with gabions, and it was along the entire length of these trenches that the determined sortie of the enemy was made on the 22nd of March. In this sortie several hundred men fell on both sides, and the dead lay so thickly on the neutral ground, that an armistice of a couple of hours was agreed to for burying them. On the extreme right of the drawing are shown the French batteries on the left of their Right Attack.
Turning now to the Russian defences, we easily recognise on the left the familiar aspect of the Round Tower, on the right of which, in a dip of the ground, is another Russian battery; the Mamelon, from which a gun has just been fired, being in the centi-e of the picture. Beyond the Mamelon in the distance are slightly indicated the numerous batteries, which had, at the time when the sketch was taken, been lately thrown up by the Russians on the North side of the harbour, as weU as an encampment of their troops.
n "s
A CHRISTMAS DINNER ON THE HEIGHTS BEFORE SEBASTOPOL.
Christmas, even in the Crimea, if we may credit the story told by the spirited and inspiriting sketch now before us, might almost be apostrophized in the very language in which Sappho celebrated the praises of Hesperus. The season and the hour combine in
" bringing all good things, Wine to the thirsty — ^to the hungry cheer;"
and though intervening seas, and Circumstance — more relentless than the ocean itself — deny the absent to the warm embrace and the hearty grasp of home-keeping friends, the
" Soft hour, which wakes the wish and melts the heart,"
reunites them once more in an incorporeal bond of sympathy, defying alike distance and time.