I AVILL now proceed with my diary, which is necessarily very meagre in incident, and, indeed, there was no event to chronicle subsequent to the terrible catastrophe of the 15th. I w;is riding from head-quarters reading my letters last Thursday when the explosion took place, and had just reached the hill, or elevated part of the plateau, at the time, and happened to be looking in the very direction of the park. The phenomena were so startling as to take away one's breath. Neither pen nor pencil could describe them. The rush of fire, smoke, and iron, in one great pillar, attained a height I dare not estimate, and then seemed to shoot out like a tree, which overshadowed half the camp on the right, and rained down missiles upon it.
The colour of the pillar was dark grey, flushed with red, but it was pitted all over with white pufis of smoke, which marked the explosions of the shells. It retained the shape of a fiitree for nearly a minute, and then the sides began to swell out and the overhanging canopy to expand and twist about in prodigious wreaths of smoke, which flew out to the right and left, and let drop, as it were from solution in its embrace, a precipitate of shells, carcases, and iron projectiles. I clapped spurs to my horse and rode off as hard as I could towards the spot as soon as my ears had recovered the shock. The noise was terrible: and when the shells bej^an to explode, the din was like the opening crash of one of the great cannonades or bombardments of the siege.
As I rode along I could see thousands luirrying away from the place, and thousands hastening to it. The smoke became black; the fire had caught the huts and tents. General Windham overtook me, riding from head-quarters as hard as he could go. He was ignorant of the cause and locality of the explosion, and was under the impression that it was one of the French redoubts. Sir Eichard Airey followed close after him, and General Codrington dashed on towards the fire a few minutes afterwards. On arriving within half a mile of the place, I saw that the ground liad been torn up in all directions, the fragments of shell were still smoking, and shell were bursting around in most unpleasant proximity. Captain Piggott, in a short time after the explosion, came up vnth the ambulances at a gallop, and urged the horses through the flames and amid the exploding shell in order to render assistance to the sufferers; and in this arduous duty he was manfully and courageously assisted by Surgeons Alexander, Mouatt, and others.
As we were all looking on at the raging fire, an alarm was spread that the mill used as a powder magazine had caught fii'e, and a regular panic ensued — horses and men tore like a storm through the camp of the Second Division. I did not escape the contagion, but, at my servant's solicitation, mounted my horse, and rode off like the rest. I soon came up to Colonel Percy Herbert, who was actively engaged in trying to get the men of his division under arms, but could find neither drummers, buglers, officers, nor sergeants. The panic was soon over. The mill did not catch, though the roof and doors and windows were blown in. The officers, in the most devoted way, stripped, and placed 300 wet blankets over the powder inside just as the flames were raging behind the mill and at the side of it within 200 yards.
The rockets now began to fly about and to increase the alarm; but the wind, which had been rather high, abated towards evening, and the fire died out. "While it lasted, the eftects were grand and terrible. Hundreds of rockets rushed hissing and bursting through the air, sheets of flame rushed up from exploding powder, carcases glared out fiercely through black clouds of smoke, and shells burst, tossing high in air burning beams of wood and showers of sparks, and boxes of small-arm ammunition exploded with a rattling report like musketry, and flew about in little balls of fire. The park was an enclosure about 100 yards long by 50 deep, suiTOunded by a stone wall, whicli separated it on one side from our right siege train.