The Express.
London, England, 1855-02-01 00:00:00

THE CONDITION OF VARNA.

(7101 t IIiLE S)ICILL

ziltws.)

OP Till OMIT

e. 7.
The English depot is slowly and by degees Idim.
appearing from Varna. In a few days more tot a
vestige of this magnificent and efficient establish.
ment will be left beyond an immense number of dead
horses, whose carcases strew all the roads and fields,
and scent the air for an English mile and a half mend
the town. Its history is a curious illustration of the
management in the commissariat and transport KT„.
vice, and throws no small amount of light upon
the darker and sadder side of the expo.
' dition to the Crimea. When I was here
in Varna last summer, I informed you,
remember, that Colonel Dickson, of the Rae.
neer., was bringing up a large number of ponies
for the baggage, which were being brought in daily
from all parts of the country. He finished by making
the government proprietor of about 2,5110 of them, at
an average cost of about 71. each, all in tolerably good
condition, strong, and, in most respects, admirably
fitted for the work for which they were intended.
They were to carry the baggage of the army ; and for
rapid movements, such as every one supposed at that
time were to be the order of the day, they certainly
presented many points of superiority to carts or
bullock-waggons. Owing to the general absence of
any movement in particular during its stay in Bal.
garia, their services were never called into requisition
at Varna, except when a small number of them car.
vied the " troops" of the Light Division to this place.
They were accordingly eoclm•ed by wattled pall.
Hader, committed to the keeping of a large number of
facetious Bulgarians, fed twice a day, watered as
often, and allowed to pass the night in furious corn.
bits, generally leuling to similar outbreaks of hoe.
tility on the part of the grooms before quiet was
restored.

The weather, however, was fine, the days were
long, and if the animals were not over-well cared
for, they were hardy, and suffered little. When the
expedition sailed for Sebastopol, none but field
officers being allowed horses or more baggage than
they themselves could carry; and in fact the whole
affair being looked upon as a sort of pic-nic party, the
main fun of which lies in little wants and
inconveniences, and which would be over in
a few days; the baggage ponies were left behind in
charge of the depot, a large body of soldiers being
turned into grooms,and the Bulgarians ignominiously
dismissed, as they deserved. The army sailed in the
middle of September. During the remainder of the
month, as well as during the month of October, the
weather was magnificent. These were the last brief
hours of comfort the ponies etjoyed. In the beginning
of November the winter began—rain, mud, wind,
&c.—the pack animals being now picketed in a large
open space between the town and the walls, exposed
to the pitiless pelting of every storm, without any
covering of any sort whatever, they stood in mud
knee high; they lay down in mud ; they ate off mud;
they were covered with mut ; and they never moved
from the same spot except twice duriog the twenty-
four hours, when they were led to water. No attempt
was made to house them or even provide cants for
them. The consequence was that before very long
the majority began to glee symptoms of what in
America is called " caving in," or, in other words, in-
dications of approaching dissolution. Very soon every
diseaso that horseflesh is heir to began to make its
appearance—farcy, glanders, splints, ringbones,
coughs, &c.; and, in addition to this, they all dwindled
down into long hairy skeletons. Frequently they
' had not half enough to eat ; and, in tact, at the time
of my arrival here, the spectacle they presented was
at once one of the most pitiable and the most dis-
graceful I ever wituessed. The poor brutes were
all suffering the most intense misery from cold
and exposure, the thermometer at night showing
six or seven degrees below freezing point, although
plenty of excellent horsecloths, lined with a coarse
blanket, and almost waterproof, were to be had in
Varna or Constantinople for sa. a piece. They fre-
quently were on short allowance of barley, more
frequently still without any hay or straw, though
there has been an assistant commissary-general with
the depot ever since the departure of the army, and
though forage is to be had in abundance at a little
distance from Varna, if one has but money and
means of transport, which the English commissa-
riat ought to have. The consequence has been that
500 of these horses at least are dead—some from
natural causes, others shot from being incurably
diseased ; 800 have been handed over to the Turkish
Pacha, to be taken care of by him, at the rate of Bd. a
day, as, owing to their extreme debility, it was
thought useless to send them to the Crimea. Of the
feeble remnant which have lately been packed cif in
the transports, the vast majority are reduced to the
last extremity of weakness, and about half have the
mange, brought on by extreme filth and the total
absence of grooming. A miserable attempt was at
one time made to separate the mangy horses frosts
the sound, but they were invariably mingled again
in twenty four hours afterwards; because, said the
keepers, they broke loose in the night. Another, and
perhaps still more proximate cause of the spread of
the distemper was the promiscuous use of the pack-
saddles, the nearest at hand being always made
use of whenever a horse was wanted for any trifling
duty. Of those now gone up to the Crimea, not one
in ten will survive more than a fortnight, if worked.
The slightest exertion will prove fatal to by far the
greater number, and many will not survive the
voyage. They have been in many instances crammed
into the ships like sheep or pigs, as in the case of
the War Cloud, where three times as many horses
were put on board as she was capable of accommo-
dating, without boxes or pi oper partitions. The con-
sequence was, that a gale coming on in the night,
the animals broke loose, fought and rolled over
one another, and in the morning, when the ship
put back into Varna, out of one hundred and fifty
only about thirty were alive, and these dreadfully
cut and disabled. What I have now said of the
commissariat baggage ponies applies equally to the
horses of the officers left behind at the sailing of the
expedition for the Crimea. All are hopelessly, irre-
coverably lost. Let me remind you that all the while
that these wretched brutes were dying here from
neglect and exposure, the army was suffering dread-
fully at Sebastopol, for want of the means of trans-
' port and stores. The men ate raw salt beef, and the
officers burnt charcoal in their tents for want of
wood, though there was wood in abundance, by all
accounts, at Balaklava. The roads were bad, it was
said—no doubt too bad—for waggons or drays,
but there were at Varna 2,000 ponies and
pack saddles capable of supplying 50,000 men with
wood enough and to spare, across any line of country
indicated, road or no road—and several hundred men,
whose services were sorely wanted in the trenches,
were here taking care of them. Stores of all kinds
lay rotting on the wharf; there was no public horse
to bring the letters up to the camp; in fact, every-
thing went wrong fur the same reason. The fact is,
that such is the woeful confusion into which every-
thing has been plunged, that the depot at Varna
seems to have been totally forgotten. The persons
left in charge of it enjoyed too much their snug
obscurity ever to think of reminding the
authorities of their existence. They fondly
hoped to pass tho winter in a sort of coma-
tose, caterpillar existence, and to come forth
sleek and shining when the frost and snow and hard
fighting were over. As to the horses, they were left to
nature and Providence. It took several letters from
the consul here to call Lord Raglan's attention to
the fact that there was at Varna 17,0001. worth of
baggage ponies for the transport service. Orders
then came down for their instant transport to Bala-
' klava; but, unfortunately, owing to the fact that ships
were absolutely necessary to proceed to their dgati-
nation, and that ships were not supplied regulirly
nor in sufficient numbers, nearly three months have
elapsed gale that order arrived, and there are