a very good young officer, for he has not been found
either. Frampton was last seen calling to his men to
stand; and I am in hopes that both of them were
untouched, and have been taken into Sebastopol. We
shall learn their fate in a day or two. Besides these
officers, I have lost 14 men killed, and 8 taken prisoners,
(these 8 all belong to the Light Company), and 14
wounded. The 50th had 400 men present; so you see
what a severe tussle we had for the possession of the
trenches. I very narrowly escaped a bayonet stab in
my right thigh; the fellow's bayonet stuck in my great
coat, but the next instant he was blown away from the
muzzle of the firelock of one of the 50th. The whole
affair lasted about an hour. If the praises of man are
good for anything (although I don't set much value on
them 'tis as well to have them as long as one remains
in this world), I ought to be very well satisfied, for I
have come in for a large share of this night's work.
When I got out among the men of the 50th, and they
heard my voice telling them to fix bayonets, to keep
together, and saying, 'Now, show them what the 50th
can do,' several of them said, 'Oh! by gor, there is our
colonel; we are all right now; follow the colonel, boys,'
&c. Sir Richard England called at my tent yesterday,
and told me that Lord Raglan desired him to tell me
that he felt much obliged for my conduct. The
Adjutant-General also called to congratulate me upon my
escape, and said that he was very glad that I was the
man who happened to have the command."

On the 9th of December a naval sortie was made
from the harbour. It is described in a letter published
in the Constitutionel; but the English ship mentioned
by the writer was not the Terrible but the Valorous.
"On the 6th, at two in the afternoon, two Russian
vessels, one of which was the famous Vladimir, sailed
out of the harbour in the direction of Streletzkaia Bay,
protected throughout their course by the quarantine
fortifications. Their object seemed to us to be to
reconnoitre the positions of our left, and to do some
damage if possible to the Caton and another of our
steamers, at anchor in the bay. But the Megère aviso,
which was en vidette before the port, having signalled
their manoeuvre, our vessels in Kamiesch Bay got up
their steam, and prepared to make for the enemy.
However, the distance from the port of Sebastopol
to Streletzkaia Bay being very short, the Russian ships
had time enough to approach the bay, driving the little
Megère (which only carries two guns) before them.
They began to fire upon the Caton, which bravely
responded. While this was going on, we saw the
English frigate Terrible rush like an enraged lion upon
the Russian ships. They had already received some
well-directed bullets from the Caton, and as soon as
they saw the Terrible coming they sheered ofl as fast as
they could under the protection of their batteries.
I never saw a more splendid spectacle than the advance
of the Terrible. She flew like an arrow. Although
the Russians ran away too soon for the Terrible to
come up with them, she sent two rattling broadsides
after them, and bravely stood the fire of the batteries,
which opened upon her vigorously. In spite of his
precipitate flight, the enemy must have sustained some
loss both from the Caton and the Terrible. The only
loss in the whole affair on the side of the Allies was two
men on board the Terrible. I must not forget to say
that the Megère gallantly followed the Terrible, and
blazed away with her two guns as resolutely as if she
had been a great ship."

Innumerable private letters describe the condition of
the army and the privations and sufferings of the men.
The correspondent of the Morning Herald writes, on the
28th November:—

"We sleep in rain and mud, get up in rain and mud,
walk about in rain and mud, and in the evening retire
to our oozy beds with feelings of grim dis-satisfaction
that we were not born tortoises or alligators, so that we
might look forward with something like satisfaction to
the prospect of passing the next six months in a puddle.
If there is any truth in the virtue of a cold-water cure,
assuredly we ought to be the healthiest army in Europe.
Of course our readers, thinking of the dirty crossings in
Bond Street and Pall Mall, will soliloquise over a
comfortable breakfast, and say, 'Yes, the camp must be
very muddy;' but let me entreat them to believe they
know nothing about it. During the course of my
wanderings I have seen some dirty places, but I never
saw ' mud,' sheer, deep, tenacious mud, till I came to
the Crimea. In fact, if you can imagine an Irish bog
that has had the horse, carriage, and passenger traffic of a
large city over it for three weeks, you will be able to
form some idea, though but a faint one, of the state of
the route between the camp and Balaklava. From the
appearance of this path it seems perfectly astonishing
how any communication can be maintained between the
camp and the source of our supplies. Ever since the
repulse we received at Balaklava, when we lost our
redoubts, and the main road to Sebastopol (and none of
which, no matter what miserable evasion our official
despatches may make about the matter, we have retaken
up to this day), the path to the English camp has lain
over the sea-side hills to the French lines, and so along
them to the English. This route is about three
miles longer than that which we formerly possessed: but
the distance would be nothing if the road was good.
As it is, it is a mere path over a stiff clay soil, winding
down ravines and up steep hills perpetually. Yet by
this road, such as it is, the whole communication
between Balaklava and the camp has to be carried on.
All the commissariat carts, all the forage, provisions,
shot, shell, and ammunition of all kinds, ambulances,
artillery, and cavalry, have to pass over it daily; and
the effects of three weeks' rain on such a route may be
imagined far easier than described. In some places
between steep hills, where the mud has settled down,
the path has been quite abandoned and a new one made;
yet even by the new one the horses have to struggle up
to their bellies in thick slush. The sides of the road are
quite dotted with dead horses, broken down artillery-
waggons, or commissariat-carts stuck fast in the tenacious
mire. Another week's rain, and this road must be
impassable."

Correspondent of the Times, December 6th:—"There
are many points on which a little attention and
care would save great trouble to the men, and
husband their strength. For instance, the coffee which
is served out to the men is the green unburnt berry.
The men have neither roasting nor grinding apparatus.
The top of the mess tin is made to do duty for the one,
and is spoilt; a couple of stones is used in lieu of the
other, and spoil the coffee; but the hardship of roasting
and grinding the berry over small bits of sticks and in
wet and storm, can only be known by those who try to
get a breakfast by adopting these conditions of obtaining
it. Why not send out good coffee ready ground in handy
tins? Surely it is not worth while to practise economy
on such a dear article as a soidier. The French are
generally provided with coffee-mills and roasters, but
even when they have no such appliance experience has
suggested a hundred means of supplying the deficiency.
These are not 'grumbles,' but honest complaints against
the perpetuation of remediable grievances. The want
of clothing, the want of fuel, the want of shelter, the
want of food, which have cost the army and the nation
so dearly, might, I sincerely and solemnly believe, have
been obviated by a small exertion of ordinary
'prévoyance.' The articles which are arriving to-day in the
Belgravia should have been here long ago; and the
supplies we are expecting daily, however welcome, are
late. They will be of service only to those who survived,
or have maintained health and strength under cold and
wet. We have tents, but cannot get them up to the
camp. There is a great deficiency of hospital marquees;
and, horrible as it is to think of such a thing, it is no less
true, that, according to information received from no
doubtful source, five men of a battalion of the Guards
were found dead outside one of the tents within the last
thirty hours."

Correspondent of the Daily News, Dec. 6:—"The
Russian Emperor's most powerful and faithful ally,
disease, has been actively at work among the British
troops. The continued rain, the insufficient diet, even
of the salt ration, from the failure of the means of
transport, and the almost impassable state of the roads,
the constant exposure and absence of shelter, spare