The Press.
London, England, 1855-03-17 00:00:00

SATURDAY,

and twenty-five of them were landed and sent back to the
hospital. Dr. Hall was on board with these men as a pas-
senger. The greater part of them were landed at Bala.
klava in the gun-vessel, the Arrow. He was not at Bala-
klava during the storm of November. The anchorage out-
side that port was exeeedingly dangerous. He had spoken
of the dangerous character of the place, but not in the way
of remonstrance. Every sailor could see the objections to
the place as an anchorage. In a south-west gale every
ship must go on shore; a steamer might easily get off the
coast. He had daily opportunities of examining the state
of the harbour. It was in a very beastly condition, with
offal floating about, thrown over from the ships. The
burial•ground had become very offensive indeed ; it was
not four hundred yards from the harbour. The graves
were dug too shallow ; he buried some of the sailors of the
Himalaya there, and paid some soldiers half-a-crown each
to dig the graves deeper. The offal floating in the harbour
could easily have been removed. The quays were in a
shocking state. He did not know whose business it was
to keep order in the place. He never saw any order kept
at all. The Himalaya required 1,200 tons of coals, and
from the want of system at Constantinople they were often
seven days being put on board ; at Malta they could have
been shipped in twenty-four hours. He thought, if proper
representations had been made by Admiral Boxer and the
British Minister, the Turkish Gouernment would have
gladly allowed all the colliers to pass up above the two
bridges of the Golden Horn, and the steamers might have
gone up and coaled alongside them, without the expense
of landing the coals first and hiring lighters to bring them
off to the steamers afterwards. AR this was not done, it
would have been better to send the steamers to coal at
Malta.
The Earl of LUCAN:—

He complained that the commissary officers were inex-
perienced men. When his division arrived at Varna there
were great delay and difficulty experienced in obtaining a
sufficiency of forage. On the 31st of August they embarked
for the Crimea, but previously lost 150 men and 85 horses.
He embarked the whole brigade, consisting of 1,100 horses.
During their sea-passage from Varna there was a fearful
amount of sickness among horses and men. He had 600
sabres and lances at the battle of the Alma. Although
there was no difficulty as regarded the supply of forage, he
had never more than one day's store on hand, co that they
lived from hand to mouth. They could have obtained
stores at Balaklava. There were ships full of barley in the
harbour, but they did not get it because the commissariat
officers said they could not land the barley. No hay was
served out to them until the end of October. They got no
chopped straw, and the horses for a short time were fed
entirely on barley. They suffered in consequence from
that kind of food, and became deteriorated in condition.
He (the noble earl) had had considerable correspondence
while iu the Crimea on the subject of the commissariat,
and " this book, said his lordship (holding up a book of
considerable size), is full of them." The correspondence
went to show that the officers of the commissariat depart-
ment were totally unfitted for their duties. At first he used
to make verbal complaints to Commissary-General Filder,
but subsequently by letter, thinking it safer. The non-
supply of forage continued the entire time. He (the noble
lord) had no answers to most of these representations ;
but one from Lord Raglan stated that he very much re-
gretted it, and he hoped it would not continue. Such was
their want of forage, between the 14th and itOth November,
that General Canrobert was kind enough to furnish them
chopped straw sufficient for thirty days. In January the
French were short of forage, but they complained that this
was caused in consequence of our commissaries not fulfil-
ling their engagements, and returning the chopped straw
they lent to the English. The cavalry were not supplied with
nose-bags and other requisites, and, in consequence, the diffi-
culties they encountered were indescribable. A great deal of
forage was lost in wet weather. In October the heavy and
light brigades had 1,844 horses fit for duty, but on the
81st of December both brigades had only 1,153 horses
left, and of that number 300 were hors de combat. The
larger amount of them died from sickness, exposure, and
overwork. The cost of a cavalry horse was 751. He wrote
to Lord Raglan, stating that he could obtain baggage-mules
from Asia Minor for 51. a-head for the work the cavalry
horses were being sacrificed for, and which they ought not
to have performed. He also adverted in his communica-
tion to the humiliation the officers of his division felt at
the position they were called upon to fill. A great sacrifice
of horses arose from the deficient character of the commis-
sariat. He calculated that 800 cavalry horses were worth
00,000/. He could, from the internal resources of Turkey
in Europe and Asia, have formed an efficient transport
service apart and independent of the commissariat, and
made a proposal to Lord Raglan to that effect, but no step
was taken in the matter. The first huts raised for
the horses were by himself. He fetched his planking
with a few baggage-horses attached to his division,
but his greatest difficulty at first was a want of
nails. There were ambulance waggons, of course,
but a worse organised corps he never encountered.
He did not consider the ambulance carriages were well
adapted for the purpose to which they were applied.
Indeed, when the roads became bad they were quite use-
less, and the men were dependent upon the French and
other means which were devised for their removal. The
commissariat were boys from the Treasury, who had no
experience in the field. He told Mr. Filder that not
only his division but the public interests were suffering
from the management of the commissariat, but his repre-
sentations to Mr. Filder were never attended to at any
time. He always thought the ambulance corps ill-
arranged for thejservice. They consisted of invalids and
men without constitutions, totally unfitted for the service.

THE number of Russian deserters now in the
Grand Duchy of Posen amounts to more than
30,000.