Poor Dawson was quite safe after the explosion, but he rushed into the park in the midst of the fire, and began removing the live shells Avitli the greatest coolness and gallantry, and it was while he was thus engaged that he received his fatal wound. Deceniber 13, 10 A.M. The storm howled and raged fearfully over the camp last night, and brought a deluge of rain, which it discharged in waterspouts, driving it through huts and tents, and forcing it in, streams through the minutest interstices. The gusts were extremely violent, and the beating of the rain kept many a one awake with only one topic of consolation, namely, that there was " No trench guard to-night." Until four o'clock the wind seemed to come from the south-west, but at that hour it veered round towards the north, and became bitterly cold.
All at once the rain was converted into hail and snow; the wet ground began to freeze; and at eight o'clock, by one of those magical changes which can only be equalled by the chjanical landscapes of our childhood, the whole camp, which, at sundown last night, was an expanse of blackish mud, dotted with white tents and huts, became a sheet of dazzling white, marked with lines of dusky, greyish habitations of canvas and wood. The wind has now diminished in force, but it is exceedingly cold and penetrating. The unfortunate natives of Southern Europe or of Asia, employed in such myriads in the service of the ai-my, suffer greatly on such occasions, and perish lik6 flies when the frost comes. The huge swarm of camp followers, who, to the number of some ten thousand, hover about the canteens and round Balaklava, Kadikoi, and the fairs, also feel the effects of this weather bitterlj^ This army is, indeed, the cloaca gentium, and has absorbed in its train all the itinerant scampishness of the old world.
It is much to the credit of the Provost-Marshals and their assistants, that these myriad specimens of the di-egs of all nations have been preserved so perfectly and kept in such admirable order. An outrage was committed at Kamiesch on Monday last of a very barbarous character, and I am sorry to say the perpetrator was a soldier and an Englishman. It appears that a man employed in a canteen in the town gave some cause of offence to the sergeant of the detachment of the 11th Hussars quartered at Kazatch, for orderly duty between head-quarters and the admiral. The sergeant, having armed himself with a pistol, went to the canteen, and acciised the man of being a deserter from the Royal Albert, calling on him at the same time to surrender and follow him.
The man denied that he was a deserter, and refused to go, whei-eupon the sergeant hred at hun across the counter, inflicting upon him a mortal wound, of which he died in a veryshort time in great agony. The sergeant was at once seized by persons m the canteen, and is now under close arrest. However, considering the vast number of all sorts and conditions of men out here, it is onl}^ astonishing that acts of violence have been so few and far between. There are not less than 25,000 camp followers, including those of the French, Sardinians, and English, belonging to the allied army, or hanging on their skirts; and some persons are inclined to believe that this estimate is very much under the mark.
In the pursuit of gain most of these people expose themselves to considerable hardships and privations. How they provide fodder for the beasts they drive is one of the secrets of their peculiar existence, and the variety of vehicles belonging to these Bashi-Bazouks of trade and commerce constitute a cimous detail of the wonders of the camp. One may witness even now some few of the incidents of the scenes of last year repeated. It was but yesterday that I saw an old Turk in a moribund state carried into Balaklava on the back of a native almost as wretchedlooking as himself; and riding on to the Land Transport camp, between Kadikoi and the Col, I beheld a native bearing in the same way a livingskeleton from one tent into another.
These men, who are generally employed as muleteers, 'are provided by Government with long Turkish gregos, but, somehow or other, exposure to bad w^eather produces disastrous results on them, although their frames seem very vigorous. I am afraid the Temperance Society wont forgive me if I express a private opinion that a little stimulant might be " exhibited" on these poor fellows, who eat largely of vegetables, and are saturated with onions, garlic, and leeks; and that, under present cu'cumstances they might, without injury, partake of a moderate quantity of spirits. If I am not mistaken, Sir Philip Crampton was of opinion that so long as the Irish were a potatophagous race, a predilection for whisky would be found among them, in obedience to a secret sympathy of nature, which sought an ally in alcohol against the effects of her esculent enemy.