ii MARCH TO THE ALMA 21 



Tuesday, September 19. Early this morning a general move 

 took place, the whole army marching off towards Sebastopol ; the 

 63rd Regiment alone was an exception, being left on the beach 

 to assist the ships in clearing away some stores which had been 

 landed and were not now wanted, and a number of sick and 

 weakly men who had been left behind from different regiments. 

 This occupied nearly the whole of a very hot day, but about 

 half-past five in the afternoon we set off in the direction the rest 

 of the army had taken ; but it appears we did not know exactly 

 which this was, for about an hour after dark we found ourselves 

 in the village which I visited yesterday, with no trace whatever of 

 the rest of the division. Even on this short march we found out 

 one of the troubles of medical officers in war time ; no provision 

 whatever had been made for the conveyance of men who fell sick 

 on the way ; in vain had we represented that such was the case 

 to various authorities ; the only reply was that all the waggons 

 were wanted for the commissariat. We certainly started off 

 without a sick man, but owing to the heat of the day, the hard 

 work the men had had, and the prevalence of diarrhoea and 

 cholera as an epidemic in the regiment, men were constantly 

 falling out of the ranks, unable to march a step farther ; these we 

 must have left to the mercies of the Cossacks if we had not 

 fortunately found two arabas on our way, in which we managed 

 to bring them all on to our destination for the night. The 

 above-mentioned Cossacks are terrible bugbears to our army, but 

 they appear to do very little or no damage beyond alarming timid 

 sentries and causing whole regiments to turn out under arms at 

 unpleasant hours during the night ; they sometimes appear in the 

 daytime, but always vanish on the least indication of our assuming 

 a hostile attitude. Night alarms are often caused by a stray pony 

 or bullock wandering too near the outposts ; one of the latter 

 was shot a few nights ago by a valiant sentry, and there is a story 

 (I believe true) of a bold Highlander firing twice at a bush and 

 then charging it with his bayonet before he discovered his 

 mistake. 



Wednesday, September 20. All up and under arms before 

 daybreak, but from some cause or other we did not move off our 

 ground till ten o'clock. It was a beautiful morning ; our route 



