The Press.
London, England, 1855-06-02 00:00:00

KERTCLI AND YENIKALE.

What is called the Sea of Azoff is in reality nothing
more than a vast pond or gulf, noted for its shallowness,
and united to the Black Sea by the Strait of Yenikale.
The Sea of Azoff is inaccessible to what would be
properly called vessels of war ; it is defended on the south
by Kertch and Yenikale, and on the north by Taganrog
and Azoff. It will be now no longer traversed, as it has
hitherto been, by a multitude of small vessels, conveying
troops and provisions for Sebastopol, for it is without
doubt part of the plan of the allied commanders to send in
a number of their own vessels and maintain the command
of the whole sea. Kertch is a small town, the chief place of
the peninsula of that name. It is remarkable for its com-
manding position on the Strait of Yenikale. Its roadstead is
fine, and it is celebrated for its fine museum of antiquities,
medals, sculpture, ihc., found in the neighbourhood. There
are several constructions of enormous size near it, which
are known by the name of the Houses of the Cyclops. Yeni-
kale is a small town, but important on account of its citadel,
which commands the strait, and which has always been
highly considered by the Russians as a fortress. The dis-
tance from Yenikale to Kertch is about nine miles, across
a verdant plain. Kertch is completely built of stone, and
the houses are handsome. It contains a population of about
10,000 souls. It was a place of only slight importance when
it was ceded by the Porte to Russia, in 1774, but it soon
after partly recovered its original splendour, to the detri-
ment of Theodosia, the ancient Kaffa. All the commerce
carried on at Theodosia was removed by the Russian Go-
vernment to Kertch, where all vessels bound to the Sea of
Azoff were compelled to undergo a quarantine of four days..
The larger vessels had their cargoes brought to them in
lighters from Taganrog, or from Rostof, but those of lighter
draught of water crossed the bar and loaded at Taganrog.
On their return, they were obliged to transfer half their
cargoes at Yenikale into lighters, and to reship it at tertch,
after having passed over the shallows. Notwithstanding
these difficulties, the commerce of Kertch and of the Sea of
Azoff rapidly increased, and in 1801 not fewer than 1,0011
vessels entered the Sea of Azoff.
KAIIIESCH.

Preparations seem to be making by the French for
a permanent occupation of Kamiesch, quite irrespec-
tive of the result of the siege of Sebastopol, or the
future fate of that fortress. The Moniteur says. :
The last despatches from the Crimea announce that the
fortifications intended to protect Kamiesch advance rapidly-
towards completion. This curious particulanty of a forti-
fied place, created in the immediate vicinity of a besieged
town, and during the siege itself, is not without precedent,
and one of the most remarkable is without doubt the con-
struction of Santa Fe by Ferdinand and Isabella, while they
were besieging Granada in 1491. The propriety of fortify-
ing the Bay of Kamiesch was long since decided on, and
at the commencement of the present year the Emperor
called the attention of the general-in-chief to this impor-
tant object ; the severity of the weather, however, and the
more pressing exigencies of the siege operations did not
allow the works b€ing commenced as soon as was wished.
Thanks to the arrival of the numerous reinforcements.
lately received by the allied army, it is now carried on
with great activity, and will he soon completed. Eamiescir
is at the present time a French port, the importance of
which will increase with the extension given to the opera-
tions in the Crimea. It was, therefore, essential that we
should secure the possession of it by defensive works,.
which henceforth leave the enemy no possibility of disput-
ing it with us.

LORD RAGLAN is nicknamed in the Crimea, Jack
Rag ; Canrobert, Robert Cant, because he can't take
Sebastopol ; Lord Cardigan, Old Charge-again ; Lord
Lucan, Old Look on ; General Scarlett, Blood and
Ouns, because of his name and from his being always
in the thick of the fight. The Russians are usually
called Johnny Ruskies ; but, when they fight with
unusual obstinacy, they are called Johnny Rustles.
Ir is stated that Mr. J. W. Carmichael, the dis-
tinguished marine-painter, formerly of Newcastle- on-
Tyne, has been commissions' by the Lords of the,
Admiralty to proceed to the Baltic and join the fleet
there, for the purpose of taking views of that sea,.
and of such operations as may occur in connection
with the present war.
A LETTER from Berne of the 24th, in the Post Ampt
Gazette, says :—" The recruiting for the Anglo-Swiss
legion is going on with great activity. A number of
recruits are found, particularly in this city and
neighbourhood, where there are many young men
out of employment, and who desire nothing better
than to enter a foreign service. Seven workmen
from one establishment have left together for Sele-
stadt, the place of rendezvous. Eleven hundred
recruits have already left for that place, and it is.
probable that the 3,000 Swiss calculated on will soon
be enrolled."

THE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA has directed a bureau to
be opened at the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg,
where will be received, in her name, gifts of money,
provisions, lint, &c., intended for the succour of the
combatants at Sebastopol.
THE last letters from Bombay announce that the
4thpragoons was about to start for the Crimea.

JUNE 2, 1855.

THE BALTIC FLEET.
(From a Correspondent.)

OFF REVEL.
MAY 18.—A mysterious rumour has been spreading
in the fleet, during the last two or three days, that
the smallpox existed on board two or three ships,
and this morning all doubt on the subject was put a
atop to by the Duke of Wellington getting under
weigh, and it being publicly given out that the
admiral was going to take his ship to Faro, there to
land the sick (amounting to forty smallpox cases,
including the commander and two or three officers),
and clean his ship thoroughly. The other ships
which are infected are Edinburgh and, as I think I
mentioned before, Arrogant. In the last-named
vessel there is a great improvement, there being
fewer cases, and those of a less virulent form.
Imph-ieuce sailed to-day for England, calling at
Faro. Admiral Seymour takes temporary command
of the fleet.

MAY 17.—Dragon arrived to-day, with four gun-
boats in tow. These latter vessels are anchored in-
shore of the fleet. The garrison at Revel are con-
stantly firing at a target; I presume to show us that
they are perfectly ready for us.
MAY 19.—Bulldog has arrived, with three more
gun-boats. Vulture has also made her appearance.
A great cricket-match was played on shore today,
which, although in rather a rustic style, was a source
of much amusement. The adventure I mentioned
in my last, undertaken by Magicienne and Merlin,
proved, as I thought at the time, a myth, the person
who gave the information regarding a Russian camp
having taken a patch of snow far a position of the
enemy ; and, as it was no lose shelling so cool a
customer as it would probably have proved, the
above-named vessels returned to their anchorage.
MAY 20.—Duke of Wellington has just come in
from Faro, where she has got rid of her smallpox
cases, and reports a decided improvement in the
health of her crew : she landed about fifty cases.
We are anxiously waiting for the arrival of the mail
from Dantzic.
MAY 21.—Driver hag arrived with the mails.
Much complaint is made that several letters are
missing. All sick reports are on a more favorable
scale to-day : no fresh cases of smallpox. The gun-
boats, eight in number, have been manoeuvring all
day, their performance of different evolutions being
exceedingly interesting. I think it is clear, how
ever, that unless the water is perfectly smooth they
could not work the heavy guns they are armed with.
We are to have a grand muster of gun-boats and the
boats of the fleet, manned and armed, to-morrow or
the next day. What a pity it is that all this arming
comes to nothing, so far as the enemy is concerned.
But this is clearly not a naval war; and, great as is
our impatience, we must not risk England's great
protection (her wooden walls) by unequal engage-
ments with stone walls. The Russian fleet are daily
becoming more formidable, and, if the war continues,
in a year or so will be perhaps tempted to try what
they can do. They have already two screw liners,
and are fast building others. Amphion is to be ac-
companied by Firefly (surveying vessel), to recon-
noitre the Aland Islands, to look into Ledsund,
Bomarsund, Magicienne, Euryalus, and Merlin
have been as far up the gulf as Hogland, and it is
expected, with the whole fleet, will make a move in a
day or two in that direction. We are on the move
for somewhere, but where it is impossible to say for
certain. Vulture goes this evening to Dantzic with
the mails. Captain Nugent, of the Royal Engineers,
has joined us for service in the Baltic, which of
course gives rise to numberless conjectures as to
what he is sent up here for. Orion (90), a magnifi-
cent ship, has arrived from England. The French
squadron of three screw liners are hourly expected,
under Admiral Penaud, a man justly most highly
spoken of by all who know him. Certainly the
admirals this year are a grand improvement on our
last dear old gentlemen.
MAY 22.—Nothing new to-day. Smallpox nearly
disappeared. I must close this, as Vulture is just
off. There is a court-martial to-morrow, so we shall
not sail before Thursday.

A NEW SEE FOR BORNEO has been constructed,
and the Rev. Dr. Francis T. M'Dougall, who has
been for some time the chief missionary in the island,
has been appointed the first bishop, with the title of
"the Bishop of Labuan," and will be consecrated by
the Archbishop of Canterbury in the course of a few
days. The bishop designate is a fellow of the Royal
College of Surgeons, and practised for many years
as a medical man. When Dr. M'Dougall is conse-
crated there will be thirty colonial bishops in con-
nection with the Established Church of England.
THE HON. Mr. FILLMORE, lately President of the
united States, arrived in England by the AtUatio on
Sunday%

THE PRESS.

THE VIENNA CONFERENCES.-FRENC H

CIRCULAR NOTE.
AN official note from the new Minister for Foreign
Affairs in Paris has appeared iu the Moniteur, con-
taining a formal reply to the Nesselrode circular
which was published on the 19th ult., and explaining
also the views of the French Government in relation
to the late conferences and the war. It had been
proposed, says Count Walewski, to postpone all
judgment on the ensemble of the negotiations until
they had been actually closed, but as the Cabinet of
St. Petersburg has thought proper to appeal to
public opinion, the French Administration have con-
sidered it expedient to follow in the same path. The
following extracts comprise the points of chief
interest in this able document, which occupies several
columns of the official journal :
The treaty of the 2nd December having been concluded,
the Western powers, from deference for their new ally
( Austria ), consented to make one last effort at conciliation,
founded on the possibility of inducing Russia to accept the
bases which, for the general interests of Europe, they had
assigned for the re-establishment of peace. It is known
that when for the first time Prince Gortachakoff was called
on, after he had obtained an official knowledge of the
common intentions of France, England, Austria, and
Turkey, to explain himself on those of his Court, he cate-
gorically refused to adhere to the conditions which were
proposed to him. It was only on the 7th January, after
a reference to St. Petersburg, that he accepted, without any
reserve, the different principles known under the name of
the four guarantees. It remains, then, established that
Russia cannot accuse us of having acted towards it by Bur-
prim) ; it knew that one of the indispensable conditions of
peace consisted in the cessation of its preponderance in
the Euzine, and time was not wanting to it to ascertain
the extent of the sacrifices which the engagement taken on
that subject was necessarily calculated to impose on her.
In the conferences, the Russian plenipotentiaries during
the discussion of the first guarantee relative, in their
opinion, to the consecration of the immunities of Moldavia,
Wallachia, and Servia, and, in our opinion, to the abolition
of the unfair influence exercised by the Cabinet of St.
Petersburg in those three vassal provinces of the Sublime
Porte, bad appeared to misunderstand the true position of
the debate. Count Nesselrode develops the same thesis;
I shall answer it by some questions. When, since the last
wars, have the immunities of the Danubian principalities
received the slightest infringement on the part of the
suzerain power? When has the Sultan ever thought of
revoking any of the concessions made by his predecessor?
When have France, England, and Austria evinced any
other desire save that of maintaining, while ameliorating,
the independent sway of the administration, which, as has
been but too much lost sight of, was neither in Wallachia
nor in Moldavia a recent conquest, but the result of an
agreement freely concluded ages ago, and only modified
from that day when the Hospodars began, during the wars
of the eighteenth century, to depend more on the Court of
Russia than on the Sublime Porte? It is thus Moldavia
lost half the territory that had been guaranteed to her by
the Sultans ; thus it was that this province and Wallachia,
instead of remaining what they ought to be, a respected
barrier between the Ottoman empire and Russia, have,
ever since the treaty of Adrianople, that seemed to recog-
nise in their behalf rights better defined, been governed
rather by agents from the Cabinet of St. Petersbinthan by
their own chiefs, and that in the midst of profound peace,
just as if they were merely a prolongation of the Russian
soil, they saw themselves unexpectedly occupied by a
foreign army.
Such are the true evils that have afflicted the Danubian
principalities, such the dangers that have incessantly
menaced them. It is to both that the first of the four
guarantees was intended to put an end
I pass to the second guarantee : the bases of its regula-
tion are good. I shall content myself with observing, that,
should the navigation of the Danube, hampered as it has
been for the last twenty-five years, recover its liberty, a war
has been requisite to induce Russia not to leave useless in
her hands one of the finest outlets in the world. Should
Germany acquire this immense boon for its commerce, it
will owe it to the blood shed by France and England.
Before addressing myself to the chief point I have to
reply to a reproach addressed by Count Nesselrode to the
plenipotentiaries of the Western powers. He accuses
them of having delayed the discussion, at the Conference,
of a question bearing on toleration and humanity, and
which ought to have occupied the first place in the delibe-
ratione—or, to speak more appropriately, of not having
taken into consideration with so much zeal aa they ought
the lot of the Christian subjects of the Sublime Porte.
There is no discussion without regularity, and it had been
agreed to examine in their order the four guarantees. Now,
if the debate stopped at the third, the obstacle did not
proceed from us; it was the Russian plenipotentiaries who
raised it, and ours merely conformed to a programme
settled beforehand. A religious question, envenomed by
the pretensions of Russia, had been the cause of the war.
The Cabinet of St. Petersburg had required a formal en-
gagement which, seemingly applicable to religious immuni-
ties alone, would not the less have humiliated the Porte,
fettered its administrative action, and have paralysed in the
civil order all efficacious reform. France and England
openly declared that the Turkish Government was bound
to refuse its submission to such conditions, which would
have entailed ruin on its independence. Count Nesselrode
says enough on the subject to permit us to doubt whether
the Russian plenipotentiaries would have confined them-
selves to these limits. They would probably, as in the dis-
cussion about the Danubian principalities, bare mistaken
the motives of the fourth guarantee, and would have for-
gotten that there was still debateable anything save the
requirement of Russia to which Europe could not sub-
' scribe. The latest reforms effected in Turkey, and the

515

eagerness the Sublime Porte has shown in listening to our
counsels, prove that the heart of the Sultan is open to the
most generous inspirations. What is essential is that these
inspirations should be carried out without troublesome in-
terference, that he who conceives them may have the merit
of them in the eves of his subjects and the world. And
to the end that this result may be obtained, it is indispen-
sable that Russia for the future should abandon the arms
she has made use of in turns, either for stopping useful
reforms or for alienating the populations from their
sovereign. Such is the meaning of the fourth guarantee,
and when we read the despatch of Count Nesseleode we
might suppose that it is not vie Red in this light at
St. Petersburg.
I now come to the question of the Black Sea. Struck,
on the one hand, with the inadequacy of the treaty of July
13, IM4I, to insure in the European family an invariable
place for the Turkish empire ; and, on the other hand,
with the dangers to whioh Turkey was exposed by the
increase of the Russian forces in the Euxine, France, Eng-
land, and Austria have declared, that the convention of the
straits ought to be revised, or in still better words to be
completed, and that it was necessary, by putting an end to
Russian preponderance in the Black Sea, to re-establish
between her and the other power having territory on that
sea the equilibrium that had been deranged by a series of
disastrous events. Prince Gortschakoff, after some hesita-
tion at first, adhered at the preliminary conference of
January 7 to the two terms of this proposition, which ex•
plains itself, which contains nothing ambiguous ; and it
was on the faith of that adhesion that the representatives
of France and England at Vieuna were furnished with their
full powers.
The Government of the Emperor and that of her Britannic
Majesty were bound to suppose that the Cabinet of St.
Petersburg had made up its mind to the sacrifices dictated
by the situation, and in this expectation the Russian
plenipotentiaries had been invited to make the initiative,
the object being to preserve the dignity of their Court.
On the refusal of the Cabinet of St. l'etersburg to be the
first to announce the concessions to which it would be
disposed to consent, the allies of the Sublime Porte, in
accordance with it, brought forward the conditions, which
are specified in one of the annexes to the eleventh protocol.
I shall make no attempt to justify our demands ; for
their moderation is self-evident. Nor shall I enter into
details that have now become futile. I prefer defining the
interests of Europe in the Black Sea, and then examining
whether the double solution proposed by Russia gives to
those interests the satisfaction which it is our object to
obtain for them.

Exclusively bordered by the coasts of the two neighbour-
ing States, closed against the other maritime powers, the
Entine had become, as it were, an arena, where adversaries
of unequal strength found themselves alone confronting
each other—the weaker of the two being delivered up to
the discretion of the more powerful. A formidable fortress
contained within its citadels and roadstead an army always
ready to embark and a fleet always ready to take them on
board and put to sea. This warlike display, unnecessary
for defence, had but one possible destination, It consti-
tuted a permanent menace against theoapitul of Turkey,
and the mystery which surrounded it increased a peril
which at the slightest symptom of a crisis alarmed the
whole of Europe. Constrained in spite or efforts, which
history will appreciate, to have recourse to arms, France
and England owe it to themselves, and also to Europe, not
to lay them down until their work shall be accomplished.
It is necessary that the peace which they shall have ob;
tamed shall be followed b 3 a secure repose.
Would such security be the consequence of either of the
two combinations recommended by Count Nesselrode ? In

a word, would these two systems p-ut an end to the prepon-
derance of Russia in the Black Sea ? The first, that based
on the principle of the complete and reciprocal opening
of the passages of the Bosphorus and of the Darda-
nelles, involves the abolition of a rule which the Ottoman
empire has always considered as its safeguard, and which
since 1841 has become part of the public law of Europe.
At present, Russia, who refuses to reduce the number of
her vessels, in alleging the exigencies of her honour and the
prerogative of her sovereignty, does not hesitate to apply to
the Sublime Porte for the abdication of its independence in
its internal waters—in the great artery which passes through
its capital. She claims a new passage into the Mediterra-
nean, that is to say, the means and the pretext of augment•
ing in vast proportions her maritime development ; and, in
compensation for these advantages, she confines herself to
giving her consent, that foreign squadrons may in future
enter a sea where they would find neither a port of refuge
nor an arsenal of supply.
In order to exercise the surveillance the right of which
would be indirectly conceded to them, France and England
would be obliged to impose on themselves for ever the
most onerous sacrifices. I will add that this consideration
is of great weight, that peace, if concluded on such condi-
tions, would be exposed to the hazard of the first incident
that might occur, and that the very object of the presence,
necessarily intermittent, of the French and English fleets
in the Euxine would already intimate a peril which would
be a menace of war. That would, in fact, be a proof that
Russia would require to be again kept within bounds, so
that her preponderance would not have ceased to exist, and
the object of the third guarantee would have been frustrated.
Would that object be better attained by the adoption of
the system developed as the second alternative by Prince
Gortschakoff and M. de Titoff? The straits, it is true,
would remain clotted ; but the status quo which existed be-
fore the war would be re established, the Russian navy
would be repaired without control behind the fortifications
of her ports ; and, when the Sultan might regard an sggre►:
sion as imminent, then only would he be authorised to give
the alarm to his allies. The reply to that appeal would be
another war, which would exhibit at the same time the
want of foresight of the Western powers, and the regene-
rated strength of the enemy whom they are combating at
present. Could they, without imprudence, consent to an

1. uiLeu atittea, arnyea In nngtena Dty UM a HaiWIG uu requirement 111 nuorns It/ ••111C11 E.I U. ‘,IIV te•
6 Undaa% scribe. The latest reforms effeeted in Turkey, and the present. Could they, without imprudence, consent Wan