They are scattered over the country very sparely, and they contain but little water. Under such circumstances, the Russians have been obliged to pour in their reinforcements by dribblets, to carry water whenever they wanted to push on even a single regiment, and to take the greatest care of the wells on their way; in one word, it was impossible for them ever to have marched a body of 5000 or 6000 men by either of those routes in diy weather. Imagine bow helpless Avould have been the position of an army of 70.000 or 80,000 men of all arms, broken and dispirited, hemmed in by this salt prairie and by the waters of the Sivash, and struggling in vain to reach those outlets under a burning sun, and pressed by a victorious enemy.
They could not march, nor, if they once got away, could we have pursued; but no General in his senses would have risked the entire destruction of his army by retreating vmder circumstances like those from the south of the Crimea; and the Russians confess their position was hopeless had they been attacked and beaten at any point along their lines. It is believed, indeed, by many persons that Marshal Pelissier received orders from the Emperor after the fall of Sebastopol not to attempt anything further against the enemy, inasmuch as the glory of the arms of France had culminated at the Malakhoff, and the prospect of an agi-eeable peace was visible to the keen eye of the accomplished politician. If such were indeed the case, the Czar is under deep obligations to his Imperial cousin.
As to the English Generals, since Lord Ilaglan's death, and even, according to M. de Bazancourt, before it, they rather repi^esented, in their relations with the French, the Blakes and Cuestas of Spain with Wellington, than those of our Marlboroughs with the Eugenes of past time; and even if we had had a larger army than France, I doubt if our Simj^sons and Codringtons could hold their own against the persistence and brusque determination of our allies in council. When our travellers were at Perekop, they observed that the defences of the place, such as they were, consisted of redoubts du'ected against an advance from Russia Proper, and not from the south of the Crimea, and they made a similar discovei'y at Tchongar, where the tete-de-pont was strongly fortified towards the north, and was open towards the south.
These works were, in fact, mostly thrown up at the time of the Kinburn expedition, which the Russians very naturally believed to be the precursor of an immediate operation against their army in the Crimea, to the results of which they looked with very great apprehension. At Perekop they found General Von Wrangel, who received them with much hospitality and kindness. The old Tai'tar citadel and the remains of a wall and parapet are still visible; but the defences of the place are very weak; water is very scarce, and very bad; but the climate is healthy, except when the wind blows across the Sivash. So miserable was the condition of the Russians, however, that no less than 25,000 men were killed by sickness and disease at Perekop, and theii' bodies lie in the earth around that fatal village.
There were large hospitals and ambulances established here, but, large as they were, they were far too small for the demands upon them, and many convoys of sick had to be sent on to Cherson, Berislafl", and Nicholaiclf. At Tchongar the tourists were refused permission to pass the bridge, and that refusal was confirmed by the General commanding at Genitchi, to whcnn they applied to rescind the decision of his subordinate. They examined the bridge, however, and found it was well and substantially built of wood. The waters of the Sivash ai-e as clear as crystal, and are so intensely bitter that no fish frequents them except a small flounder. The bottom consists of a stratum of fine shells, of two or three inches in thickness, just sufficient to bear a man treading lightly \ipon it, but if one presses with all his weight down on this crust of shells it breaks beneath his feet, and up rushes a quantity of black mud and a bubbling stream of stinking gas, probably sulphvu-etted hydrogen, which has perhaps obtained for this lagoon such an unseemly title.