Ingenious engineer suggests iliat my tinned iron dish shall be used as a fryingpan; carried iicm. con. As to saucepan, some ingenious person drives two holes in a potted-beef tin case, thi'usts a piece of wood through them as handle, and proceeds to make soup therein over a bUizing fire liglited up in one of the ruined fireplaces of the drawing-room. Just as soup is ready, handle barns thi'ough and soup upsets into the fire — a disaster quite irretrievable, and so we proceed to devour tough ration beef done in steaks on the tin dish. Sherry is forthcoming, bread, and preserved vegetables. Water is boiled in a small teapot, and produces enough for a temperate glass of grog; the blankets are spread on the floor, and preparations are made for sleep.
First, however, the watch is appointed. Each man takes an hour in the alphabetical order of his name, from eleven to five o'clock, to watch the horses, to keep in the fire, and to guard against theft. The mangle is broken up for firewood. In doing so, the best made London axe, bought from an eminent London saddler, flies in two at the first chop! — useful article for travelling! Odd legs of chairs and tables, bits of drawers and dressers and cupljoards, are piled up for the same purpose, and our first watch is left on his post. We muster three double-barrelled guns and four revolvers between us — a total of thkty shots; but the night passes over quietly. Sunday. Below the walls of the house in which we encamped, buried amid orchards and vineyards, is a ruined villa with marble fountains and handsome rooms.
It is pillaged and wrecked like the rest, but it tempts most of our party to plunge down through the bi'ushwood and thick scrubby woods, interlaced with " Clirist's thorn" and long creepers, to the ledge on which it stands above the sea at a considerable elevation, notwithstanding that it is half an hour's steep descent to the ledge from the shore. The silence, broken only by the cry of the eagles which soar about the clifls, the surge of the wave on the rocks, and the voices of the birds in the groves, is rather a source of pain than of pleasure. 3falheur a la devastation is inscribed on the walls. But who were the devastators? ■ The Russians allege it was the allies — the Tartars declare it was the Russians themselves.
There are many who believe that these very Tartars had no small share in the plundering and wrecking of their taskmasters' and conquerors' summer palaces. We know from experience that on the march to Sebastopol, every village, every little villa and farmhouse, was sacked and destroyed by the enemy, and Bourliouk, Eskel Mamarhai, Belbek, &c., were in ruins before our YOL. II. G G CliniEA. outposts reached them. Tlic evidence so far is against the Eussians. As the walls and roofs of these houses are untouched, they look as picturesque and pretty from a distance as ever they did, and it is only on nearer approach that traces of the hand of the spoiler become visible. We had a very excellent breakfast, notwithstanding the extraordinary rich flavour of onions in the tea, which was accounted i'or by the circumstance that the water had been boiled in the soup-kettle.
Some officers of the Guards who had followed us, and bivouacked near the post-house which we had passed on the road, came in as we were at " our humble meal," and relished their share of it exceedingly. Their cart pushed on in advance of ours, and as they profited by our labours of ycsterdaj'', so did we in a smaller degree (our cart was larger than theirs) reap the advantage of their preceding us part of the way to-day. We started about eleven o'clock, and our hai-d work soon commenced. Between the enemy, the French, and the winter, the road scarcely existed; it had been swept down into the ravine. However, our motto was vestigia nulla retrorsum, and the colonel, the major, the captain, the D.A.C.G., the civilians, and the soldiers, worked as if for their lives, and succeeded in the course of the day in executing the following useful public works: — No. 1.