The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-16 00:00:00

DECEMBER 16, 1854.

If peace is not concluded by the end of the year, the
three Powers are to deliberate without delay on the further
measures to be taken.

VI.
Prussia is to be invited to join.
VII.
As to ratifications, &c.
A secret article exists which, of course, was not pre-
sented to the House of Commons.

OUR HEROES IN A HURRICANE.
THE tempest of the 14th of November, with
its destructive fury, may be ranked as the
most sublime incident in the eventful cam-
paign of the Crimea. There was something
else for our matchless soldiers to encounter
besides fighting against the thousands of a fero-
cious foe. The tremendous powers of Nature
—the dire artillery of the elements—were still
to be arrayed against troops, whom neither the
fortified heights of the Alma, nor the fearful
odds at Inkermann, had daunted in their
soldierly resolve. Freezing cold—a gale, up-
rooting trees, overthrowing waggons, and ac
tually whirling men over and over like feathers
—suddenly in one night assailed our gallant
army, encamped on bleak hills, on the shores
of the dreadful Euxine sea, which performed
its owe cruel part in the horrors of that me
morable day.
Imagination cannot conceive a more tre
mendous spectacle than our camp presented
on that morning. There they were—the
heroes, whose exploits were the admiration of
Europe, exposed to a combination of horrors.
Their tents were all blown down, the rain
descended in floods, and what at first had
been a furious gale rose into a blasting tor-
nado. Officers and men were drenched
through and through. The temperature fell
several degrees, and their fierce spirits, whose
pulses had bounded with martial joy at the
roar of the cannon, and the din of deadly
strife, were half frozen, while their blood stag-
nated in their veins. A frowning sky was oven
head. They had no dry footing to stand upon,
for what had been the camp was turned
into a quagmire. The tempest had put
out all fires, and there, upon that awful
day, stood our brave compatriots, with empty
stomachs and shivering limbs, while the
storm-fiend howled and thundered over their
heads in all the appalling fury of his wrath.
And as the hours wore on the tempest ga-
thered up all its force to smite our mariners
upon the sea. In the landlocked bay of Bala-
klava, a►id along that ironbound coast, our
vessels were driven against each other, and
upon the rocks, with the crushing vio-
lence of railway collisions. Spars and masts
crackled and fell with mortal effect upon
some poor fellow buffetting the waves for
his life, or giving his expiring energies to the
rescue of some ship in peril. The angry bil-
lows rose around the doomed mariners, and
with cruel fantasy sported with them for a few
tantalising hours, mocking the long-tried skill
and dauntless nerve of some valorous sea-
captain exerting himself to the last to save
his ship and crew. And then at one swoop
the roaring ocean would open its awful depths,
and in an instant submerge for ever the noble
vessel with its precious cargo, and still more
precious freight of human souls, whelmed in
the swallowing waves.
If one, caring only for the sublime in nature,
could have beheld that dreadful scene, he
might have gazed upon such effects as no poet
could dream of, or painter transfer to canvas.
But how the appalling intensity of that awful
drama would be heightened by recollecting
the human interest of forty thousand fellow-
countrymen far and far away from home and
fireside ! There they were with the wind and
rain driving furiously against them—cold, wet,
and hungry, while Nature, in her most savage
mood, seemed to have turned against them
and resolved upon their ruin. But, to their
honour be it told, they stood up against the
horrors of that dies ire with unfaltering spirit.
We learn that even then they were actually
anxious to he led against Sebastopol. Though
the elements were let loose, their manhood