Solitary subalterns ride out to Miskomia, and gaze gloomily on the beautiful mistletoe which grows on all the wild pear and apple trees in these lovely valleys. Their contentment returns when they think of the fat goose, which, tied by the log, is awaiting his doom by the kitchen tent or bakehouse, or of the tender pig, which has been reared up from his childhood ANTICIPATIONS OF CKllISTilAS. 387 for the sole object of dolug honour to the coming feast, and is "just fit to be killed." Ah-eady contrasts are drawn between dinners in the trenches, on dreary outposts, on remote guards and pickets last year, and the luxuries which are forthcoming for the grand English festival. Men remember " that tough old turkey, which cost 40s., and that turned the edge of the carver like plate glass," and laugh over the fate which seemed somehow to attend most efforts to be jolly last Christmas, and then turn and look round their huts, which are generally, it must be confessed, very like retail grocers' establishments, backwood stores, or canteenmen's magazines.
The shelves which are placed along the walls in layers, the cupboards being made of packing-cases or powder-boxes, are filled with spates in Strasburg ware, hams, tins of soups and preserves, made dishes, vegetables, long-necked bottles of French manufacture, and the stumpier sturdier work of the English glass-blower. There is a stove or some substitute for a fireplace in each hut, and it always enjoys the advantage of a famous draught fi'om the door and walls. As to the latter, the embellishments upon them wile away many an idle hour, and afford opportunities for the exercise of taste, good and bad, the monuments of which must perish with the spring. They consist chiefly of illustrations from the pictorial papers and Punch, which are transposed ingeniously by the introduction of faces, figures, and bits out of different engravings, with the view of giving them a ludicrous or whimsical character, and the result is often very amusing.
The walls are covered with them; a pastepot, a pair of scissors, some old papers, and a little fancy — these are materials of which a man can make wonderful use in enlivening and decorating the wooden walls of his temporary residence. CHAPTER XLI. Diary — OczakofT fortified — Number of Russian troops in tlie Crimea, according to the IiivaU(k Rasse — Exliaustion of Russia — Tlie BasliiBazoalcs of trade and commerce — Valuable officers — Balaklava weU worth a visit — Puzzles for antiquarians — Sebastopol not tlie place for a pleasure excursion — A hardworking lieutenant — One hundred times in the trenches — Mistakes at home — Rumours of an Order of Jlerit of Victoria. December 11.
According to intelligence received from Kinburn, the Russians exhibit their usual energy in casting up defensive works along c c 2 388 CAMP EMPLOYMENT?. tlic banks of the Bug, and there is reason to believe that they are equally active in throwing lines across the spit before Oherson, and in making redoubts to oppose the march of any force from Kinburn upon the last-named city. The Dnieper is supposed to be quite impracticable, and the Bug will speedily ofler enormous obstacles to the advance of even the most heavily armed and lightest-built gun-boats and mortar-vessels. The enemy are also placing OczakoiF in a condition of defence, and in this they confine themselves to making Avorks on the upper cliffs, which can scarcely be touched by the fire of our ships.
The Cossacks have shown themselves from time to time in the neighbourhood of Kinburn, but the state of the spit prevents them from establishing a camp or even a grand guard near the fort. Three military and three naval French officers, who went out shooting on the spit, a few days after the sailing of the ships for Kamiesch, were picked up and made prisoners by these lynx-eyed gentry. They surrounded our gallant allies under cover of a i'og, and then lured them one after another into their snares, by shouting in French, and discharging their carbines. They literally used snares, for they had ropes all ready for each man as they caught him, and to bind him if he resisted or tried to give the alarm to his comrades.