" By 3 P.M.," he continues, " all the long ranges of stores of grain, plank, and tar, and the vessels on the stocks, were in a blaze, as well as the Custom-house and other government buildings, and unfortunately, but unavoidably, the town in many places, and, our purpose being amply effected, the boats returned to the Kecruit. The loss of the enemy in men must have been severe, as many were seen to fall. They deserve credit for the obstinacy with which they endeavoured to gain positions to prevent our effecting the object we had in view, but it was impossible to face the continuous and well-directed fire kept up. Their loss in grain of different descriptions I cannot estimate, but, as it comprises all, or very nearly all, in store at Taganrog, it must be enormous."
The only casualty incurred on our side in carrying out this service was one marine artilleryman wounded.
On the 5th June the Russians, who had already on the 28th May withdrawn from Soudjak Kaleh, evacuated Anapa, thus abandoning their last stronghold on the Circassian coast.
The garrison, estimated at between 7000 and 8000 men, retired on the Kouban river, after exploding the powder magazines, disabling the greater portion of the guns, and setting fire to the barracks, storehouses, and all the coal and grain in the place. Hoth Anapa and Soudjak Kaleh were at once occupied by the Circassians, and the Russians thus relinquished without striking a blow the cherished fruits of a five-and-twenty years' struggle with these hardy and untameable mountaineers.
On the preceding evening the French and English squadrons had anchored off Marioupol, a considerable town on the military high road from the provinces of the Don to the Crimea: and on the following morning an officer of each nation was despatched to demand the surrender of the place on exactly the same terms as those offered at Taganrog. No answer having been returned, a party of Marines under Lieutenant Macnamara and a body of French small-arm men were landed, and a body of 600 Cossacks com-
.
manded by a Colonel liaving retired from the town on their approach, they fired and destroyed the vast quantities of grain and other stores here accumulated, without encountering opposition or suffering a single casualty.
The squadrons now repaired to Gheisk, which they reached on the 6th, and, precisely similar terms to those tendered at Taganrog and Marioupol having been offered to the Military Governor Colonel Borsikoff, whose small force was quite inadequate to defend the town, were acceded to by him without demur.
A party of Marines and Frenchmen was accordingly again landed, and an enormous quantity of hay stacked on the beach ready for conveyance to the Crimea, and several thousand quarters of wheat, were destroyed by them.
The launches of the line-of-battle ships, having thus successfully effected the special service for which they had been detached, and completely scoured the Gulf of Azoff, returned to their respective ships.
Shortly after, the Kertch expedition, leaving garrisons at Kertch and Yenikale, and having accomplished every object originally contemplated, with a fortune inuneasurably beyond the hopes of its most sanguine promoters, returned to Kamiesch and Balaklava. In one short fortnight the Russians had been compelled to abandon several strong positions both in the Crimea and in Circassia; the AUies were firmly established on two new points of the enemy's territory, which extended and varied their base of operations; the Sea of Azoff had been swept from one extremity to the other of the painfully accumulated provisions destined to supply the wants of the Russian army for months, whilst the means of transporting and storing the coming crops had been everywhere destroyed; and, incredible as it must always appear whenever the fact is recalled, these vast results, which narrowed the issue between the combatants to the fate of Sebastopol, were attained without the sacrifice on the part of the Allies of one human life. Such a triumph so achieved is, in the unexaggerated sense of tbe phrase, without a parallel.
Nor did the successes in the Sea of Azoff terminate here.