536 
THE SHIPK^ PASS.. 
place, good physical condition entails good moral condition, and a full 
soldier and a fasting soldier are two very different beings and are of 
very different temperaments. Four-fifths of a soldier’s courage is 
physical, and the rest moral, and therefore it is of most importance to 
keep up his physical strength. In the second place, some tidings of 
what was going on elsewhere was usually brought up with the rations; 
often some papers, the Russian Invalid or the TetucMne ListoJc , or some 
others were sent by the careful hand of some staff officer. In the third 
place, some articles of clothing were also often sent up which were in 
great request, both for officers and men. Presents were also often sent 
to the defenders of the Shipka, and those that were most appreciated 
by the men were boots and tobacco, the former most necessary articles. 
The latter, the soldiers greatest comfort, becomes almost indispensable 
to him on active service. The days on which those good things arrived 
were kept almost as holidays on Mount St. Nicholas. We used often 
to order for our men cheap Bulgarian tobacco, but they thought it far 
inferior to Kussian “ jilJca 33 or “ machorJca 33 Often and often the 
infantrymen used to come to our fellows and ask to buy the Bulgarian 
tobacco, but here the good side of our men came out, and they insisted 
on their less fortunate comrades sharing their “jilJca 33 and many will 
remember having asked soldiers :—“ What do you want still, you have 
enough to eat and drink, your boots and clothing are good, and the 
brandy is still to the fore,” and having received the answer :—“ All 
that is nothing Highness, without tobacco ! 33 Tobacco was the only 
luxury they craved after, a pipe after their morning cup of tea. 
After dinner the men lay down to snatch a little rest till the sappers 
came at 4 o’clock, when the work began. There were six of them, and 
each carried a gabion, which of course was not enough to carry out the 
requisite repairs. Our officer, charged with the superintendence of the 
working party, observed this, and said so to the sapper officer, as the 
gabions were not sufficient to revet one embrasure, let alone the 
parapet. The sapper officer answered that his orders were only to 
repair the damages in the battery and not to carry out new works; that 
if we wished to do so, we should have to use our own men and do it 
ourselves, as the duty of the sappers was to superintend the works and 
not to execute them, and all changes in the works had to be carried out 
by the troops occupying them. He had right on his side, and the 
question was where were we to get gabions and fascines. We could 
not make them in the battery, and if we could have done so, where was 
the brushwood to come from ? To this he proposed that a fatigue party 
of our men should be sent down to the sappers bivouac. But this we 
could not do under any circumstances ; we should have to take men 
away from the guns, and if we had to fire again in the night time what 
should we have done ? The sapper officer observed, with justice, that 
we could fire with diminished numbers. We replied that it was possible, 
but that we could not answer for the steadiness of the detachments. 
We knew well from our short experience of active service that with 
diminished numbers the loading is not so well performed, and that 
running-up is much hindered. Our usual practice was to keep the Nos, 
5 and 6 in the lodgments, No, 5 got the tube ready, while No. 6 took 
