The Express.
London, England, 1855-07-21 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 21.

THE summer is passing away, and the most patient
and modest contributors to the spirit and resources
of the war are fairly tired of the daily repetition of
"nothing new" from the seat of war. It is not
"ignorant impatience" which renders France and
England anxious and vigilant about news. Every-
body has learned what the heats of August are in
the Crimea, and the frosts of September in the Baltic.
The best thing done this year is the little campaign
in the Sea of Azoff. Men want to know why there
is not more collateral action of the same kind in other

quarters of the Black Sea than the north-eutern. Why
are not our spare ships and gunboats—for there are
some sent back to Sebastopol frem the Kertch expe-
dition—despatched to the north-western coast P It
appears that vast Russian reinforcements are sent
down to Odessa, Nioolaief, and Khereon. It is true
these reinforcements do not seem likely to afford

much aid to Sebastopol, because they rather aggra-
vate than relieve the main want of the Russians—
fresh water. All the bullock waggons of the country
are engaged to carry water for the troops on their
march; but the bullocks and their drivers want some
of the water themselves; and the remainder is a
mere dribble in comparison with the quantity needed.
At Sebastopol, where the water is in ordinary times
filtered in the docks to supply the ships, filtering
must long since have appeared an almost forgotten
luxury, so great is the scarcity of water altogether.
When the water supplied by the aqueduct was cut off,
the inhabitants depended on the fitful stream of the
Tchernaya, and on the reservoirs in the docks. The
reservoirs were, some time since, very low and foul,
according to the uniform testimony of deserters;
and, besides that the Tchernaya shrinks to a
mere thread at this season : our allies now
command its connexion with Sebastopol. The re-
inforcements are not likely, by all accounts, to help
the besieged or injure the besiegers much, even if they
get south of Perekop at all; but we might, by a
little activity, have prevented there being any bar-
bourne for them in those southern settlements which
we shall have to deal with, sooner or later.

It seems to be a serious mistake to allege that we
have done great things in annihilating, for the time,
the foreign commerce of Russia in the Baltic and else-
where. The trade which the Czsus care for and en-
courage is the interior trade, which is carried on
by serf merchants, under the control of the authori-
tier. The foreign commerce of Russia is purposely
thrown into the hands of foreigners, whom the go-
vernment is content to see ruined and driven home,
as the leaser evil of the two. The Cutts do not choose
to let their native subjects engage in foreign com-
merce, for very sufficient reasons; and the impedi-
ments placed in their way are so great, that very few
Russian. can surmount them. Few can prove their
possession of the capital required of the guild, which
can alone yield qualified merchants for this kind of
commerce; few can discharge the necessary obliga-
tions to government ; and there is little inducement to
enter into competition with foreign settlers on terms
so disadvantageous. The result of our blockade
and forays in the Baltic, and in some parts of
the southern coasts, will, therefore, be to impoverish
a good many Germans, Armenian., Italian'', Greeks,
and others, and also to prevent the ingress of raw
material for manufacture and the uses of daily life in
the interior; but not to paralyse the State, as every
other State would be paralysed, by the annihilation
of its foreign commerce. There is, however, an
opportunity at hand of so paralysiug a native Rus-
sian branch of industry, if we only had the prompti-
tude and sense which are necessary to the proem-
don of all war. The Russian people cannot exist,
nor can their chief branches of industry be carried
on, without the salt which they can obtain only from
the limans which fringe the shore of the Black Sea.
At this time of year, the government storehouses on
the Dnieper and Dniester are empty of salt;
and by the end of July the government agents
are superintending the gathering of salt from
the limns, or legnnes, first to replenish
the storehouses, and then to supply the in-
terior. The nobles of the interior, already nearly
ruined by the loss of a market for their corn and
hides, would submit to the war no longer, if their
one remaining resource of Black Sea salt were cut off.
In July, their agents go down to the coast, and gather
the saline harvest, which must be got in by August,
or not at all. All along the shore reed huts are
scattered, for the accommodation of tho Cossacks who
are posted to prevent smuggling—to guard the strewn
or stacked salt while it lies draining. The season is
a short one; and it could not be very difficult to
embarrass the enemy there, as we have cut off his
resources in the Sea of Asoff.
The only conceivable reason why the whole coast,
from the Crimea to the Danube, has not been pre-
vented from helping Sebastopol all this time is our
deficiency in gunboats. It is enough to put the allied
nations past their patience to see—as we do more and
more—what we have lost by this deficiency in gunboats;
and especially, how little was done during the winter
to supply the need. A few more would have enabled
us to take plenty from the Russians, which we must
suppose we shall do, sooner or later. At the present
moment, there is the best possible work for every'
structure which can bear guns into shallow water,
in preventing the salt crop of the Black Sea from
being gathered this year by Russians. The best salt
stations are on three limans south-west of Odessa;
but those Cossack huts may be seen at intervals all
the way round to !thereon and Perekop. There is a
rumour, it may be observed, that our gunboats
are to traverse the Putrid Sea, from Genitchi
to Perekop, to stop Russian reinforcements.
If enough is known of that dismal swamp
of the western world to afford a reasonable
chance of success, the enterprise may turn,
out a very good one ; but we must hope that
there is sufficient force to spare to disable the places
where the latest Russian reinforcements are ap-
pointed to assemble—Kherson,Nicolaist, and Odesea.
Kherson is capable of little defence, if any; it was
all but deserted before the war, and cannot
have been effectually renewed since. The difficulty
about Nioolaief is the shallowness of the water ; but

some of the largest vessels of the Black flea fleet—the
Twelve Apostles, for one—were built there, and con-
veyed by " camels" to deep water ; and Russian gun-
boats and larger store vessels do go tip to the docks ;
and where they have gone, we may follow. If the
dockyard stores at Nicolaief were burned, we should
have done more for the limitation of the naval power
of Buda is the Black Sea than any Vienna Confe-
rences that ever were it ever will be:

As for Odessa, we know, and the Russians
know, that the place is in one power whenever we
choose to set to work properly to take it. If we had
done the work thoroughly at Seat, Sebastopol would

have been ours long ago; and the sooner we do it
the sooner will Sebastopol be ours now. the Rus-
sians are banished from the Circassian coast, and
disabled along all the north-eastern shores. Now is
the time to paralyse the north-western. That done,
and Little Russia remaining in its present state of
insurrection, the Crimea may be under our feet be-
fore the autumn storms come to swamp our enter-
prise for this year.