As to the fragTnents of shell, you might macadamize roads with them — jagged, rusty bits of iron, infinitely various in size and form; one thinks, as one looks at them, how many a stout and gallant fellow received his quietus from some of them before they fell to the ground after their diverging upward flight. Then you come upon ill-treated cannon, some trunnionless, others with muzzles knocked off", some burst into two or three pieces, and others bearing indentations as from the hammer of a Cyclops. You walk up into the Kedan — into tlie Malakhoff, if tlie French sentries object not — and you marvel at the huge dimensions of those famous works, and feel more surprised at their having ever become ours than at their having so long resisted the utmost efforts of English and French.
They are iiideed a medley of enormous earthworks, huge lumps of stone, heaps upon heaps of shot and broken shell and damaged guns, everything rugged and battered — a work of giants reduced to chaos. And then the gloomy, fetid bomb-proofs, in which for so long a time the stubborn Russians Im-ked — they are wretched holes, worse than most dungeons. A minutely accurate drawing of as much of the Malakhoif or the Redan as an artist could embrace at a view, would give a better idea of the natm-e of the difficulties which the besiegers had to surmount, than any attempted sketch of the fight. The state of the town itself is the best proof of the enormous loss the Russians must have suffered during this long and eventful siege, and especially towards the close, when no part of the south side seems to have escaped our projectiles.
The place is literally riddled with shot. You come upon all kinds of fantastical shattering — houses still standing Avhich, according to all one's previous notions of support and balance, ought to fall to the ground; walls with huge holes through them; roofs in rags; and everywhere, within and without the place, the ground is ploughed up into great holes, by the bui'sting of shells. The news of the repulse, and the very heavy loss sustained by the Russians at Kars, is fully confirmed. The English officers there are said to have highly distmguished themselves. This severe check, and the capture of Kinburn forts and the garrison, must be a great discouragement to the enemy. The success of the expedition makes one doubly regret that more has not been undertaken, and that so little profit has been made of the six weeks that have now elapsed since the capture of Sebastopol.
It is manifest that we have ample means at om* command, and that whatever is ordered, withm reason, will be triumphantly executed by the zeal, skill, and courage of our officers and men, even though, as at Kinburn, our line of battle-ships have to be taken where there are but two feet of water under their keels. What is wanting is, a head to devise and decision and promptitude in command. It were unfair not to make due allowances for some difficulties and obstacles of which we know notliing. but we should be over-indulgent and over-credulous if we admitted that all had been done as it ought. The enemy is said to be clearing roads through the brushwood down from Mackenzie's Farm, and to have planted four guns to command the causeway across the marsh at the mouth of the Tchernaya.
This looks as if tliey contemplated an attack in force along our line, but I persist in thinking that their apparent preparations for action are made merely for the purpose of" deceiving us. The Russians are the most patient and laborious people in the world for nises de guerre of that kind. The French hold a grand review at two this afternoon, in the plain by Kadikoi. They are now marching down — Imperial Guards, Zouaves, &c., all in fine order, and brilliant in appearance. Monday, October 22. Mr, Doyne, the indefatigable superintendent of the Army Works Corps, proceeds vigorously with his labom-s. Roads are being opened out in all directions. There are about twenty miles in progress. The pains that are taking with their constraction and its excellence appeared almost superfluous to some of the military bigwigs here, but before we have got through our four months' winter they wiU probably change their opinion on that head.