486 THE CRIMEA. 



On the afternoon of September lOtli, after running 

 across Balaclava Bay, and rounding Cape St. George, we 

 entered the harbour of Sevastopol, at the mouth of vs^hich 

 stands Fort Constantine, looking as strong as ever, though 

 its southern brother is utterly destroyed. The interior of 

 the town presents a scene of destruction for which we 

 were quite unprepared. Not only are the dockyards and 

 government buildings blown to pieces, but the main sti-eet 

 is deserted and grass-grown, and the houses that line it, 

 built of white stone, stand roofless and shattered wrecks. 

 Nowhere but at Pompeii have I seen such desolation. The 

 population has fallen from 80,000, before the war, to 8,000 ; 

 it is now rising again, owing to the recent establishment 

 of the shipbuilding yards of the ' Black Sea Steam Navi- 

 gation Company ' in the Admiralty Creek. Their new 

 machinery-sheds, and the adjacent barracks, are the only 

 signs of life about the place. 



We were surprised to find the lines of the Eussian 

 defences so perfect ; the lower story of the MalakhofP tower 

 still stands, surrounded by the big ditch and high mound ; 

 the salient angle of the Redan looks fresh and sharp, and 

 a dismounted cannon lies in one of the embrasures. On 

 the heights outside the town, the trenches are easily trace- 

 able, and at a greater distance, where the huts stood, the 

 ground is strewn with fragments of broken bottles and old 

 shoe-leathers. The French dead have been, as far as possi- 

 ble, collected into one cemetery, which is planted with 

 trees, and placed under the charge of a resident guardian ; 

 but the bodies of our countrymen lie scattered over the 

 downs, in more than fifty small enclosures, each surrounded 

 by a low wall. At the time of our visit, these graveyards 

 were covered with a dense growth of weeds, many of the 

 tombstones were broken and the inscriptions erased, and 



